“Hey, Ricky, so what is it?”
“Ms. Terry. Sorry to get you up in the middle-”
“No need to apologize,” she interrupted. “It’s my job, too. What’ve we got?”
The detective shook his head in a world-weary way, said “Thought I’d seen everything,” and pointed to the back of the Animal Control truck, giving a small wave. One of the green-suited officers standing adjacent opened the truck’s double-wide rear doors, exposing two steel-reinforced cages inside. The cages were designed for wayward wild panthers and aggressive alligators.
Or pit bulls. Two of them. Heavily muscled, scarred faces, thick chests. Frothing, snarling, beyond savage, they instantly threw themselves against the cage barriers, shaking the truck, howling banshees, frantic in their desire to get free.
“Jesus,” Susan recoiled a step and blurted out. “What the hell…”
And then Detective Gonzalez told her a story. It was a midnight story, with a touch of Poe or Ambrose Bierce and typical of South Florida.
A solitary older man-crippled in an industrial accident years earlier so that he now limped on a deformed leg-whose primary source of income was occasionally training dogs for illegal underground fights unfortunately happened to live next door to a family whose two young boys taunted him mercilessly. Fed up, the old man had invented a fast-release lock on the caged area where he kept his dogs and stopped chaining the dogs securely. Slipknots and weakened links. The boys stopped in front of his house this past night, decided to throw rocks at the dogs they believed were safely locked up, threw other rocks at the old man’s windows. Woke him up. Called him names. Just a little bit of local nastiness on a night that was far too hot, far too humid, and destined for something terrible.
The old man assumed that his wire fence in front would hold the dogs in, and he triggered the pulley system he’d designed, freeing two of the animals. He’d figured that the sight of two seventy-pound dogs flying across the yard, teeth bared, would do an adequate job of putting the right sort of fear in his tormentors. The fence would stop the dogs, the kids would be terrified, and he’d have a measure of satisfaction without even bothering to take the usual Dade County approach, which was brandishing a handgun.
He’d been wrong in all his assumptions.
Both dogs slammed into the fence. It buckled, gave way, and they scrambled through the opening.
Both dogs had easily run down the panicked youngsters.
Both dogs had rapidly ripped the life from the children before the old man could get loops and chains around their necks and get them under control.
End of story. She could feel weakness in her core. Awful. Not tragic. Just sick.
“You don’t want to see these bodies,” Gonzalez said to Susan.
She choked at the thought of mauled children. “I have to…” she started.
“The dogs,” the detective said. “Are they, like, weapons that we should impound? What sort of homicide is this? We talking a strange sort of Stand Your Ground law thing here? I mean, after all, the kids were throwing rocks. But these dogs, well, are they evidence? Seems like a bunch of legal questions, Counselor. If it was up to me, I’d shoot ’em right here. But I wanted to consult with you first.”
Susan nodded. She knew what she wanted to say: ”You’re a hundred percent right. Shoot the dogs. A little instant street justice. She did not say this. “Seize the dogs. Have Animal Control maintain a constant record, just like if they were a gun or a knife at a murder scene, so we have proper chain of evidence to produce in court. Make sure you take sworn statements from those officers about how dangerous the dogs are and make sure you get some of that…” she gestured toward the back of the truck, where she could still hear the dogs slamming against their restraints, “… on video. Arrest the old man, read him his rights, and charge him with first-degree murder. Have Crime Scene make sure they keep that locking system intact, so that we can present it in court. Get pictures of the fence, where the dogs broke through…”
She took a deep breath. The orderly prosecutor inside her was shaken. “Jesus,” she added.
“I’ve seen bad,” Gonzalez said. “But this one. Those dogs, they go straight for the jugular. Trained killers. Hell, they’re worse than some professional hit man and twice as efficient. Kids didn’t have a fucking chance. People think, it’s just a dog, how hard could defending myself be? They’ve got no clue.”
He took her arm and steered her farther into the crime scene. One body was in the side yard. The other was just outside the front door. Susan took another deep breath. That one almost made it, she thought. She paused when she saw an assistant medical examiner. Even in the flashing lights, she thought he looked pale. He was poised above a small body. She looked down at the kid’s bright blue high-tops, not his throat. Then she forced herself to lift her eyes.
That was Susan’s morning.
Mauled, half-eaten child; it had played some terrible chord deep within her and she’d tripped. Stumbled. Fallen. Failed. Evil is relentless and routine, she thought.
Every addict knows two numbers to call when they see something or do something or learn something that makes them totter on that edge that they thought was far away, but is really right beneath them all the time; when something happens that suddenly strips away all the facades of normalcy and reestablishes all the pain that resides hidden inside. One number is for a sponsor, to talk them out of doing what they want to do. The other number is the dealer, who will provide the alternative.
I wouldn’t have called if it hadn’t been for dogs and dead kids’ bodies. I thought I had it all beat. I was back to being the tough prosecutor with the knife edge and granite surface. Things bounced off me. That’s what I thought. No more desire. Except for tonight and all that children’s blood.
Susan believed if she were truly smart she would be able to look at her life and say to herself: Oh see, I wasn’t loved enough as a child and that’s why I’m an addict. Or: I was beaten and abandoned and that’s why. Or: I was weak when I should have been strong, lost when I should have been found, hurt when I should have been healthy.
In possession of understanding, she would be armed against herself.
It didn’t work that way.
Instead she was back in her apartment hours later, drinking hard and staring at the choice on her glass tabletop. Gun and coke. Coke and gun. Shoot the dogs. Shoot yourself.
One death or another.
When the phone rang behind her, she jumped.
First there was silence.
Moth looked around at the others gathered at Redeemer One and doubted they’d ever heard a story like his before. It wasn’t a story about the types of compulsions they were all familiar with.
He didn’t have to wait long before the group burst into a chaotic mishmash of questions, comments, fears, and suggestions that all came flying at him as he stood in front. It was like being buffeted by a strong wind. The usual Redeemer One decorum and orderly processes of sharing were instantly shattered. Voices were raised. The air was electric with opinions. Arguments, sarcasm, even some shaky doubts all reverberated around him.
“Call the police.”
“Like 9-1-1? That’s nuts. Some cop will show up and have no clue what to do.”
“Well, then how about the cops that already investigated Ed’s suicide?”
“Yeah. Call them and tell them how stupid they’ve been. That will work.”
“Well, how about hiring a private detective?”
“Better yet, hire an attorney who employs a private detective.”
“That makes some sense, except how many attorneys know how to deal with some revenge killer? How do you look up that category in the phone book? Where is it? Somewhere between defending DUIs, divorces, and estates and wills?”