She had gotten my fosters killed. Not the time to point that out.
“Still, he was drawn to virtue. He may not have felt compassion, but he began to seek it out. And the boy went overboard — he called it ‘love’ and proposed to all of you.”
I still held the gun on Billie but my hand was tired. Billie noticed. I leaned against my side of the cage, and Gotti remained standing inches away.
“You want to know what happened that morning. Fair enough. He wasn’t so far gone on you that he didn’t welcome my visit to your bed. He was less welcoming to Heidi and Gunther. But as I told him, they had a vet appointment later that morning. I told him to put your dogs in the bathroom, and it wouldn’t be a problem. But there was a problem: he couldn’t get it up. That was a first. And he blamed it on me. I did this, I did that, and I brought the fucking dogs. The fucking dogs.
“I had left them outside the bedroom door in a down-stay. I got out of bed, pulled on my clothes, and Bennett failed to apologize.”
The dog whose kennel I shared sniffed the gun and lost interest in it.
Billie had answered my questions, except for one — was I going to have to kill her?
“You going to write me up for your thesis? I’m more interesting than Bennett.”
She was interrupted by the dogs in the ward, all of them, barking. Then I heard what had set them off. I thought I did — I thought I heard a man’s voice call out from somewhere inside the shelter. I strained to hear, and I heard it again. Billie did, too. A man’s voice, a little closer this time, called out so that we could hear the words: “Police! Is anyone there?”
Billie put a finger to her lips and looked out the wired-glass window in the ward door. Her dogs turned their heads in unison, keeping her in sight.
Billie ducked as the beam of a flashlight shone through the window.
I screamed, “I’m in here!”
“This next is on you.” Billie opened the ward door and said to her dogs, “Reeh veer!”
They tore out into the hall, synchronized specters, their full attention on their prey.
Billie followed her dogs.
It sounded as though every dog in the place was barking. The noise disoriented me so that I couldn’t pick out Billie’s dogs from the rest, if Billie’s dogs were even making a sound during their attack. But I could hear one of the cops yelling. Then he screamed. Why hadn’t he used his gun? But I hadn’t used my gun.
“Good boy,” I said to my cellmate as I unlocked the kennel door.
The cop was on the ground, but he was no longer screaming. I couldn’t tell if he was still alive, but the white dogs on top of him — I saw them in the dimly lit hall — were covered in blood.
I crept up behind Billie, intending to clock her with the gun I could not make myself fire. I would have to hit hard enough to keep her down. But if I whacked her, what would her dogs do? I had never hurt anyone, nor did I have the skill to hit a moving target. The thought made me sick to my stomach. Then I saw, to the left of me, the door into the fenced exercise yard. When I got out into the yard without Billie’s seeming to see me, I had a thought I almost couldn’t bear in case it didn’t work: maybe I could get a signal on my phone.
In the dark yard, cluttered with balls and a coiled hose that tripped me, I held up the phone, waving it to try to catch a signal. But what I heard first was a gunshot from inside the shelter. One shot. Whom had the second cop fired on? One dog? That wouldn’t stop the other. I waited for a second shot.
Instead I got a signal.
“What is your emergency?”
“A cop is being killed. We’re on East 119th Street, the animal shelter. Please hurry.”
The door into the backyard pushed open. Billie. And one of the Dogos at her side.
Billie made a show of looking around. “Can you imagine this is the only exercise yard they have?”
“Your dogs killed that cop.”
“That cop killed one of my dogs.”
I saw movement behind Billie. And so did the dog. The door opened, and I saw the second cop with his gun drawn. Before the cop was all the way through, the Dogo lunged. The cop got off a shot, but the dog’s attack on his firing arm caused the bullet to hit Billie. She went down, but was not unconscious. She swore and clutched her leg. The Dogo had knocked the cop’s gun out of his hand with such force that it had skittered across the pavement, stopping closer to Billie than to me.
I kicked it past Billie’s reach and turned my attention to the Dogo and the cop. The cop was on his back, twisting and fending off the dog with his arms. I took aim but didn’t trust myself to hit the dog and not the cop.
“Make him stop!” I yelled at Billie.
“It’s the female. That’s Heidi.”
I turned the gun on Billie. “Make her stop,” I said evenly.
“Like you’re going to shoot me.”
As much as I wanted to, she was right.
I shot at the dog and dropped her.
I heard sirens over the chaotic barking, meaning a full-on response — a cop was down. I turned the gun on Billie and waited for the police to find us.
“You can’t say it hasn’t been an education,” Billie said.
“Out here,” I yelled, not knowing if the cops could hear me yet.
“Always looking to a man to save you.”
Then the door to the exercise yard opened. A stream of cops, guns drawn, pushed through.
“Drop your weapon,” one of them yelled. For an odd moment I didn’t realize he was addressing me. “Put down the gun.”
I set the gun down.
One of the cops kicked it away from me and said, “Down on the ground.” He kicked my legs apart, frisked me, grabbed my arms, and twisted them behind my back to handcuff me.
“She shot me,” Billie called out. “My leg. I can’t walk.”
“Get the EMTs out here,” one of the cops yelled to another.
“Is the other officer okay?” Billie asked.
“I’m not the one you should be worried about,” I said to the cop holding me down. He said nothing, just yanked me to my feet.
“You hurt anywhere else?” one of the cops asked Billie.
“She came out of nowhere. I’m just a volunteer.”
The EMTs arrived and began working on the mauled cop. Seconds later, another pair moved quickly into the yard and knelt beside Billie.
“Were you shot anywhere besides your leg?” an EMT asked.
“I can’t feel my leg.”
I finally found my voice. “Those white dogs are hers. They’re attack dogs. She commanded them to attack the officers.”
“I don’t think I’m hit anywhere else,” Billie said.
A cop came into the yard and said to his partner, the one who was holding me, “We lost Scott. Fucking dogs ripped his throat open.” The cop grabbed me by the throat. “I should rip your fucking throat out.”
“Not here,” said the cop holding me.
After the EMTs got an IV going for Billie, they lifted her onto a stretcher, but waited for the unconscious cop to be evacuated first.
Despite the activity all around me, I sensed things as being done in slow motion. I looked up at the run-down apartment buildings that flanked the open backyard. Lights were on, windows were open, and people on every floor were watching and taking pictures with their phones.
A dozen or so cops moved to surround me — the guilty one — and pushed me back inside. When they marched me past the body of the dead cop, they stopped and forced me to look. I threw up. Billie was right — this one was on me.
Out front, the scene was militaristic; helicopters shone searchlights on the shelter. As I was being shoved into a squad car, one of the cops Mirandized me.