Watchers (8 page)
The dog yawned.
By the time Travis pulled into the driveway of his four-room rented bungalow on the northern edge of Santa Barbara and switched off the pickup’s engine, he was beginning to wonder if the pooch’s actions that morning had really been as amazing as he remembered.
“If you don’t show me the right stuff again soon,” he told the dog as he slipped his key into the front door of the house, “I’m going to have to assume that I stripped a gear out there in the woods, that I’m just nuts and that I imagined everything.”
Standing beside him on the stoop, the dog looked up quizzically.
“Do you want to be responsible for giving me doubts about my own sanity? Hmmmmm?”
An orange and black butterfly swooped past the retriever’s face, startling it. The dog barked once and raced after the fluttering prey, off the stoop, down the walkway. Dashing back and forth across the lawn, leaping high, snapping at the air, repeatedly missing its bright quarry, it nearly collided with the diamond-patterned trunk of a big Canary Island date palm, then narrowly avoided knocking itself unconscious in a head-on encounter with a concrete birdbath, and at last crashed clumsily into a bed of New Guinea impatiens over which the butterfly soared to safety. The retriever rolled once, scrambled to its feet, and lunged out of the flowers.
When it realized that it had been foiled, the dog returned to Travis. It gave him a sheepish look.
“Some wonder dog,” he said. “Good grief.”
He opened the door, and the retriever slipped in ahead of him. It padded off immediately to explore these new rooms.
“You better be housebroken,” Travis shouted after it.
He carried the galvanized washtub and the plastic bag full of other purchases into the kitchen. He left the food and pet dishes there, and took everything else outside through the back door. He put the bag on the concrete patio and set the tub beside it, near a coiled hose that was attached to an outdoor faucet.
Inside again, he removed a bucket from beneath the kitchen sink, filled it with the hottest water he could draw, carried it outside, and emptied it into the tub. When Travis had made four trips with the hot water, the retriever appeared and began to explore the backyard. By the time Travis filled the tub more than half full, the dog had begun to urinate every few feet along the whitewashed concrete-block wall that defined the property line, marking its territory.
“When you finish killing the grass,” Travis said, “you’d better be in the mood for a bath. You reek.”
The retriever turned toward him and cocked its head and appeared to listen when he spoke. But it did not look like one of those smart dogs in the movies. It did not look as if it understood him. It just looked dumb. As soon as he stopped talking, it hurried a few steps farther along the wall and peed again.
Watching the dog relieve itself, Travis felt an urge of his own. He went inside to the bathroom, then changed into an older pair of jeans and a T-shirt for the sloppy job ahead.
When Travis came outside again, the retriever was standing beside the steaming washtub, the hose in its teeth. Somehow, it had managed to turn the faucet. Water gushed out of the hose, into the tub.
For a dog, successfully manipulating a water faucet would be very difficult if not impossible. Travis figured that an equivalent test of his own ingenuity and dexterity would be trying to open a child-proof safety cap on an aspirin bottle with one hand behind his back.
Astonished, he said, “Water’s too hot for you?”
The retriever dropped the hose, letting water pour across the patio, and stepped almost daintily into the tub. It sat and looked at him, as if to say,
Let’s get on with it, you dink
.
Let’s get on with it, you dink
.
He went to the tub and squatted beside it. “Show me how you can turn off the water.”
The dog looked at him stupidly.
“Show me,” Travis said.
The dog snorted and shifted its position in the warm water.
“If you could turn it on, you can turn it off. How did you do it? With your teeth? Had to be with your teeth. Couldn’t do it with a paw, for God’s sake. But that twisting motion would be tricky. You could’ve broken a tooth on the cast-iron handle.”
The dog leaned slightly out of the tub, just far enough to bite at the neck of the bag that held the shampoo.
“You won’t turn off the faucet?” Travis asked.
The dog just blinked at him, inscrutable.
He sighed and turned off the water. “All right. Okay. Be a wiseass.” He took the brush and shampoo out of the bag and held them toward the retriever. “Here. You probably don’t even need me. You can scrub yourself, I’m sure.”
The dog issued a long, drawn-out
woooooof
that started deep in its throat, and Travis had the feeling it was calling
him
a wiseass.
woooooof
that started deep in its throat, and Travis had the feeling it was calling
him
a wiseass.
Careful now, he told himself. You’re in danger of leaping off the deep end, Travis. This is a damn smart dog you’ve got here, but he can’t really understand what you’re saying, and he can’t talk back.
The retriever submitted to its bath without protest, enjoying itself. After ordering the dog out of the tub and rinsing off the shampoo, Travis spent an hour brushing its damp coat. He pulled out burrs, bits of weeds that hadn’t flushed away, unsnarled the tangles. The dog never grew impatient, and by six o’clock it was transformed.
Groomed, it was a handsome animal. Its coat was predominantly medium gold with feathering of a lighter shade on the backs of its legs, on its belly and buttocks, and on the underside of the tail. The undercoat was thick and soft to provide warmth and repel water. The outer coat was also soft but not as thick, and in some places these longer hairs were wavy. The tail had a slight upward curve, giving the retriever a happy, jaunty look, which was emphasized by its tendency to wag continuously.
The dried blood on the ear was from a small tear already healing. The blood on the paws resulted not from serious injury but from a lot of running over difficult ground. Travis did nothing except pour boric-acid solution, a mild antiseptic, on these minor wounds. He was confident that the dog would experience only slight discomfort—or maybe none at all, for it was not limping—and that it would be completely well in a few days.
The retriever looked splendid now, but Travis was damp, sweaty, and stank of dog shampoo. He was eager to shower and change. He had also worked up an appetite.
The only task remaining was to collar the dog. But when he attempted to buckle the new collar in place, the retriever growled softly and back-stepped out of his reach.
“Whoa now. It’s only a collar, boy.”
The dog stared at the loop of red leather in Travis’s hand and continued to growl.
“You had a bad experience with a collar, huh?”
The dog stopped growling, but it did not take a step toward him.
“Mistreated?” Travis asked. “That must be it. Maybe they choked you with a collar, twisted it and choked you, or maybe they put you on a short chain. Something like that?”
The retriever barked once, padded across the patio, and stood in the farthest corner, looking at the collar from a distance.
“Do you trust me?” Travis asked, remaining on his knees in an unthreatening posture.
The dog shifted its attention from the loop of leather to Travis, meeting his eyes.
“I will never mistreat you,” he said solemnly, feeling not at all foolish for speaking so directly and sincerely to a mere dog. “You must know that I won’t. I mean, you have good instincts about things like that, don’t you? Rely on your instincts, boy, and trust me.”
The dog returned from the far end of the patio and stopped just beyond Travis’s reach. It glanced once at the collar, then fixed him with that uncannily intense gaze. As before, he felt a degree of communion with the animal that was as profound as it was eerie—and as eerie as it was indescribable.
He said, “Listen, there’ll be times I’ll want to take you places where you’ll need a leash. Which has to be attached to a collar, doesn’t it? That’s the only reason I want you to wear a collar—so I can take you everywhere with me. That and to ward off fleas. But if you really don’t want to submit to it, I won’t force you.”
For a long time they faced each other as the retriever mulled over the situation. Travis continued to hold the collar out as if it represented a gift rather than a demand, and the dog continued to stare into his new master’s eyes. At last, the retriever shook itself, sneezed once, and slowly came forward.
“That’s a good boy,” Travis said encouragingly.
When it reached him, the dog settled on its belly, then rolled onto its back with all four legs in the air, making itself vulnerable. It gave him a look that was full of love, trust, and a little fear.
Crazily, Travis felt a lump form in his throat and was aware of hot tears scalding the corners of his eyes. He swallowed hard and blinked back the tears and told himself he was being a sentimental dope. But he knew why the dog’s considered submission affected him so strongly. For the first time in three years, Travis Cornell felt needed, felt a deep connection with another living creature. For the first time in three years, he had a reason to live.
He slipped the collar in place, buckled it, gently scratched and rubbed the retriever’s exposed belly.
“Got to have a name for you,” he said.
The dog scrambled to its feet, faced him, and pricked its ears as if waiting to hear what it would be called.
God in heaven, Travis thought, I’m attributing human intentions to him. He’s a mutt, special maybe but still only a mutt. He may look as if he’s waiting to hear what he’ll be called, but he sure as hell doesn’t understand English.
“Can’t think of a single name that’s fitting,” Travis said at last. “We don’t want to rush this. It’s got to be just the right name. You’re no ordinary dog, fur face. I’ve got to think on it a while until I hit the right moniker.”
Travis emptied the washtub, rinsed it out, and left it to dry. Together, he and the retriever went into the home they now shared.
Dr. Elisabeth Yarbeck and her husband Jonathan, an attorney, lived in Newport Beach in a sprawling, single-story, ranch-style home with a shake-shingle roof, cream-colored stucco walls, and a walkway of Bouquet Canyon stone. The waning sun radiated copper and ruby light that glinted and flashed in the beveled glass of the narrow leaded windows flanking the front door, giving those panes the look of enormous gemstones.
Elisabeth answered the door when Vince Nasco rang the bell. She was about fifty, trim and attractive, with shaggy silver-blond hair and blue eyes. Vince told her his name was John Parker, that he was with the FBI, and that he needed to speak with her and her husband in regards to a case currently under investigation.
“Case?” she said. “What case?”
“It involves a government-financed research project on which you were once involved,” Vince told her, for that was the opening line that he had been told to use.
She examined his photo ID and Bureau credentials carefully.
He was not concerned. The phony papers had been prepared by the same people who had hired him for this job. The forged documents had been provided ten months ago to assist him on a hit in San Francisco, and had served him well on three other occasions.
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