The dog was barking and furiously trying to claw her way through the aluminum panel of the storm door.
They’re inside, thought Roback. Around the dog and through the rear. But Shelley would have heard the dog, known something was wrong, and been ready—
Using the fence for support, he reached the gate, reeled through, and released the dog, staggering after the bitch as she flashed around the house, dimly noting that the phone wire snaking down the side had been cut; made it to a stanchion supporting the patio roof in the rear where he sagged and clung with both hands, fighting nausea and gaping at the nightmare of a double-imaged, screaming, blood-covered Fred bursting through the door pursued by the dog; watching as the bloody, out-of-focus figure dived into the blurred shed where he kept some of his light tools just in time to slam the door in the face of an airborne, indistinct brown fury whose hurtling weight shook the shed with a dull boom.
He rubbed his eyes, trying to clear his vision, pushed away from the patio stanchion and through the door, the screen flapping where it had been cut to get at the inside latch.
Inside, Con was on the floor to the left, back propped against the base cabinet, T-shirt stained with blood.
On the other side of the kitchen, Shelley sprawled on the floor alongside her overturned wheelchair, the Ladysmith just beyond her hand, the cordless phone she always kept with her under one bent knee, her transceiver a few feet away.
Clinging to the cabinets for support, Roback made his way to her side, knelt, and tenderly fingered a massive bruise on her face, taking in the small pool of blood under her head.
She would have heard the dog, but not known what was going on because he and the men couldn’t be seen from inside the house; tried to call him on the radio. No answer, so she’d probably tried to dial for help on the phone, not aware they’d cut the wire. While she punched frantically at buttons, her confusion had given them enough time to get through the door. Still, she’d had time to shoot Con, but Fred must have reached her before she could shoot again. He’d hit her, knocking the wheelchair over and driving her head into the sharp corner of the base cabinet.
He’d been somewhere in the house when the dog found him.
Roback felt for a pulse, found none, wasn’t alert enough to tell if she was alive or dead, couldn’t make that decision. He had to get her to the medical center, let someone whose brains hadn’t been scrambled take that responsibility.
And Roback, normally a stoical man who took things as they came, showing neither overwhelming excitement at good news nor extreme sadness at bad, threw his head back and roared with an ancient fury... a battle cry of rage and hate that promised death to the enemy... but no time now to run to the toolshed and empty the gun into Fred...
He scooped up his wife. Head pounding, double vision back, room swimming, nausea churning his stomach, gelatinous knees threatening to give way with each step, he zigzagged out the door and toward his pickup, wondering if he could manage to keep it on the road. Staggering like a drunk who’d had three too many, eyes fixed on the distant, gleaming medical center where they had saved Shelley once and had to do so again, he sank lower and lower until he pitched forward on top of his wife, legs scraping uselessly at the gravel of the driveway until they quivered and stopped.
The dog was snarling again nearby. He opened his eyes and lifted his head to stare into the flat-eared, fangs-bared, bloody, foam-flecked face two feet from his.
An atavistic fear bubbled. No mistaking the menace there. The prey was down, but this was no food kill by a wild animal. This was revenge. As far as the dog was concerned, he was just as accountable as the other two for the still form pinned beneath him. And he was. The primary responsibility to protect her had been his. He’d failed. Denied vengeance on the man in the shed, she’d extract it from the next on her list.
“No!” he croaked, hoping the dog wasn’t beyond listening to him. She couldn’t know that at this point he was the only hope that Shelley had.
The haunches sank, the body a spring about to uncoil.
Shelley moaned softly, the sound magic; the lips lowered over the fangs, the body softened, the ears rose questioningly, and the tail moved in delighted anticipation. The dog settled with her nose an inch from Shelley’s face, tongue flicking out to lick her cheek.
Fighting the nausea, Roback rose to his hands and knees. His head pounded... a sweat that had nothing to do with the oppressive heat poured from him even though he felt cold... there was something very badly wrong with him. And getting worse... beyond any willpower to overcome. Couldn’t carry her, couldn’t drive. He knew that now. If he didn’t get help, they’d both die there under the brutal sun.
And then from deep inside his injured brain, something whispered phone, and he remembered the cellular unit he’d installed in the pickup so he could keep in touch with Shelley even on the road.
With the slow, hesitant, rocking instability of an infant, he crawled to the truck, pulled himself erect, fumbled the phone into his hand, pushed the button and fingered out a number. Blackness as deep as death descending again, all he could do was whisper, “Roback,” over and over until he passed out.
On the hillside from where he’d seen it all begin, wearing a white bandage like a headband, he sat and rested before resuming his unfinished spraying. No work for a week, they’d said, when they’d sent him home after opening his skull. A subdural hemorrhage is nothing to fool around with.
Neither were the aphids and fungi that were celebrating a ten day hiatus from his sprayer.
Chambers had stood beside his bed holding his broad-brimmed hat in both hands, a wisp of a man with ruddy skin pulled tight over a bony face, body lithe under the tailored tan uniform, gray hair cut to a half inch. In twenty years, no one had ever run against him for sheriff.
“The man who took the call didn’t know what the hell was going on,” he said. “To him it sounded like someone saying, ‘Go back, go back,’ which made no sense at all, but he also said, ‘Breaking up like one of them cellular phones.’ Bulb lighted in my head. I remembered us talking about how that cell phone would keep you in touch with Shelley wherever you were, so I put one and two together and slammed out of there.
“When I found you, I couldn’t tell what in the hell had happened. You were out cold. So was Shelley. The big guy was dead in the kitchen. Then I heard the one in the toolshed moaning. When I pulled him out, I figured he couldn’t last very long without help. In the few seconds she’d had at him, the dog turned him into some pretty raw meat, and he was losing blood fast. I’d already called for an ambulance so the guys slapped a couple of pressure bandages on him, but hell, you and Shelley were our first priority. I let him bleed until the second unit came. For my money, the techs did too good a job because he survived, but maybe that was a good thing because then he could tell us all about it.”
Chambers settled his rear end on the windowsill.
“I don’t have to tell you what would have happened to you both if it hadn’t been for that dog. Fred would have left no witnesses. He thought he’d killed you already when he sapped you with that blackjack. Haven’t seen one of those in a long time. Used it on Shelley, too, the son of a bitch. Real warped character, that man. He was using the big guy Con—”
“He looked familiar,” said Roback.
“You probably saw him on TV. What he was an actor in a cop show that bombed after a couple of episodes a few years back. Played a vice squad detective, they tell me. But you know some of these show biz personalities. Push clean living on the screen and go home and snort coke, like the rules don’t apply to them. He should have paid more attention to the part he was playing. Stoked himself up pretty good one night with some controlled substance and thought he was Superman. Tried to fly from a second floor balcony but naturally hit the courtyard below faster than a speeding bullet. Must have thought he was rescuing Lois Lane because he took an actress named Joanie with him. Anyone as lucky as her should have run out and bought a fistful of lottery tickets. She landed on his six three and two hundred pounds of padding. Then Fred came along, figured that he could use someone that size as an intimidator, so they roamed the lonely places of the country leaving blood and tears behind. Car broke down and could we use the phone, ma’am, was only one of their techniques. At last count, they’re wanted in three states for questioning, but those are only the early returns.”