“I’ll try it out for you,” Lucy offers.
“Good,” Marino says to her. “You put it on, and I’ll start shooting, see if it works.”
“Or trauma from blunt force, which is what most people seem to forget about,” I tell Briggs. “The round doesn’t penetrate the body armor, but if the blunt force from the impact goes as deep as forty-four millimeters, it’s not survivable.”
“I haven’t been to the range in a while,” Lucy chats with Marino. “Maybe we can borrow Watertown’s. You been to their new one?”
“I bowl with their range master.”
“Oh, yeah, your team of cretins. What’s it called? Gutter Balls.”
“Spare None. You should bowl with us sometime,” Marino says to Briggs.
“Would it be acceptable to you, Colonel, if AFDIL sends in backup scientists to help out at the CFC, for God’s sake?” Briggs is saying to me. “Since it seems we have an avalanche of evidence that just keeps coming.”
“Any help would be greatly appreciated,” I reply. “I’ll work on the vest right away.”
“Get some sleep first.” Briggs says it like an order. “You look like hell.”
22
Massachusetts Veterinary Referral Hospital has twenty-four-hour emergency care, and although Sock doesn’t seem to be in any distress as he snores curled up like a teacup dog, a Chihuahua or poodle that can fit in a purse, I need to find out what I can about him. It is almost dark, and Sock is in my lap, both of us in the backseat of the borrowed SUV, driving north on I-95.
Having identified the man who was murdered while walking Sock, I intend to bestow the same kindness toward the rescued race dog, because no one seems to know where he came from. Liam Saltz doesn’t know and wasn’t aware his stepson Eli had a greyhound, or any pet. The superintendent of the apartment building near Harvard Square told Marino that pets aren’t allowed. By all accounts, when Eli rented his unit there last spring, he didn’t have a dog.
“This doesn’t really need to be done tonight,” Benton says as we drive and I pet the greyhound’s silky head and feel great pity for him. I’m careful about his ragged ears because he doesn’t like them touched, and he has old scars on his pointed snout. He is quiet, like something mute. If only you could talk, I think.
“Dr. Kessel doesn’t mind. We should just do it while we’re out,” I reply.
“I wasn’t thinking about whether some vet minded or not.”
“I know you weren’t.” As I stroke Sock and feel that I might want to keep him. “I’m trying to remember the name of the woman who is Jet Ranger’s nanny.”
“Let’s not go there.”
“Lucy’s never home, either, and it works out just fine. I think it’s Annette, or maybe Lanette. I’ll ask Lucy if Annette or Lanette could stop by during the day, maybe first thing each morning. Pick up Sock and take him to Lucy’s place so he and Jet Ranger can keep each other company. Then Annette or whatever her name is could bring Sock back to Cambridge at night. What would be so hard about that?”
“We’ll find Sock a home when the time is right.” Benton takes the Woburn exit, the sign illuminating an iridescent green as our headlights flash over it and he slows down on the ramp.
“You’re going to have a lovely home,” I tell Sock. “Secret Agent Wesley just said so. You heard him.”
“The reason you can’t have a dog is the same reason it’s always been a bad idea,” Benton’s voice says from the dark front seat. “Your IQ drops about fifty points.”
“It would be a negative number, then. Minus ten or something.”
“Please don’t start baby talk or gibberish or whatever it is you speak to animals.”
“I’m trying to figure out where to stop for food for him.”
“Why don’t I drop you off and I’ll run to a convenience store or market and pick up something,” Benton then says.
“Nothing canned. I need to do some research first about brands, probably a small-batch food for seniors because he’s not a spring chicken. Speaking of, let’s do chicken breasts, white rice, whitefish like cod, maybe a healthy grain like quinoa. So I’m afraid you’ll need a real grocery store. I think there’s a Whole Foods somewhere around here.”
Inside Mass Vet Referral, I’m shown along a long, bright corridor lined with examination rooms, and the technician who accompanies us is very kind to Sock, who is rather sluggish, I notice. He is light on his small feet, slowly ambling along the corridor as if he’s never run a race in his life and couldn’t possibly.
“I think he’s scared,” I say to the tech.
“They’re lazy.”
“Who would think that of a dog that can run forty miles an hour,” I comment.
“When they have to, but they don’t want to. They’d rather sleep on the couch.”
“Well, I don’t want to tug him. And his tail’s between his legs.”
“Poor baby.” The tech stops every other second to pet him.
I suspect Dr. Kessel alerted the staff of the greyhound’s sad circumstances, and we’ve been shown nothing but consideration and compassion and quite a lot of attention, as if Sock is famous, and I sincerely hope he won’t be. It wouldn’t be helpful if news of him became public, becoming chatter on the Internet and voyeurism or the usual tasteless jokes that seem to crop up around me. Do I take Sock to the morgue? Is Sock being trained as a cadaver dog? What does Sock do when I come home smelling like dead bodies?
He doesn’t have a fever, and his gums and teeth are healthy, his pulse and respiration are normal, and no sign of a heart murmur or dehydration, but I won’t allow Dr. Kessel to draw blood or urine. We’ll reserve a thorough checkup for another time, I suggest, because the dog doesn’t need more trauma. “Let him get to know me before he associates me with pain and suffering,” I suggest to Dr. Kessel, a thin man in scrubs who looks much too young to have finished veterinary school. Using a small scanner he calls a wand, he looks for a microchip that might have been implanted under the skin of Sock’s bony back as the dog sits on the examination table and I pet him.
“Well, he’s got one, a nice little RFID chip right where it ought to be over his shoulders,” Dr. Kessel says as he looks at what appears in the wand’s display. “So what we have is an ID number, and let me give the National Pet Registry a quick call and we’ll find out who this guy belongs to.”
Dr. Kessel makes the calls and takes notes. Momentarily, he hands me a piece of paper with a phone number and the name Lost Sock.
“That’s quite a name for a race dog, huh, boy?” the vet says to him. “Maybe he lived up to it and that’s why he got put out to pasture. A seven-seven-zero area code. Any idea?”
“I don’t know.”
He goes to a computer on a countertop and types the area code into a search field and says, “Douglasville, Georgia. Probably a vet’s office there. You want to call from here and see if it’s open? You’re a long way from home,” he says to Lost Sock, and I already know I won’t call him that.
“You won’t be lost ever again,” I tell him as we return to the car, because I don’t want to make the phone call in front of an audience.
The woman who answers simply says hello, as if I’ve reached a home number, and I tell her I’m calling about a dog that has this phone number on a microchip.
“Then he’s one of our rescues,” she says, and she has a Southern drawl. “Probably from Birmingham. We get a lot of them retired from the racetrack there. What’s his name?”
I tell her.
“Black and white, five years old.”
“Yes. That’s correct,” I reply.