Off in the distance, he could hear the sudden burst of backyard fireworks, one day early. He knew that the police and fire departments were on high alert; there had been nothing but warnings all week about the drought-dry tinder, and the dangers of setting off a wildfire. Carter had never been anywhere near such a blaze, but he’d seen the news footage of previous blazes on CNN. And the sad interviews afterward, with people who had struggled to save whatever they could — their pets, their photo albums, their family silver — from the devouring flames. One guy had narrowly escaped on a bicycle, clutching, of all things, a massive bowling trophy.
He looked around the small, fenced yard, and heard Champ before he spotted him. Most of his body was under a bush, apparently trying to root something out. All Carter could see was his bushy blond tail.
“Champ!”
The dog’s tail wagged, but he was still intent on what he was doing.
“Come on, Champ. Time to go inside.”
Carter went closer, but all he could see was the dog’s arched back and wagging tail. “What are you doing?”
Carter put his hands on Champ’s haunches and gently dragged the dog out of the brush. Champ didn’t resist, but he didn’t cooperate, either. He just allowed himself to be pulled, like a statue, backward on the patchy grass. In his jaws, Carter could now see his prize — it looked like the bones and carcass of a recently deceased squirrel — and Champ was clearly not planning to let go.
“Oh, man, what do you want that for?” Carter said. “Don’t we feed you better than that?”
Champ glanced at him, but appeared to be utterly unpersuaded.
“Come on, boy, let go,” Carter said, squatting down and trying to dislodge the remains. But Champ growled, and Carter let go, wiping his fingers in the dirt.
What was the best way to win this war? Carter wondered. Should he go inside, get something the dog liked — maybe a big wad of peanut butter? — and get him to drop this treat for an even more appealing one?
Champ shook the desiccated carcass, as if making sure there wasn’t any life left in it, and that’s when it suddenly occurred to Carter — Champ might be the answer to at least one of his problems. Why didn’t he think of it sooner?
He jumped to his feet, ran into the kitchen, got the peanut butter — he just brought the whole jar outside — and let Champ bury his face in it. With the toe of his sneaker, Carter kicked the now neglected squirrel over the edge of the yard and down into the ravine below.
“You want to go for a ride?” Carter said to Champ, who was too busy with the Skippy to pay any attention. When the dog took a break, Carter put the leash on him and went back inside. He bounded up the stairs to the bedroom, where he found Beth propped up against a stack of pillows, with her nose in a sheaf of papers. “I’m going to go out for a little while,” he said.
“Out?” she said. “Now?”
“There’s something I forgot at work.”
“At the Page? Why can’t it wait till tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow it’s closed, for the Fourth.”
“It’ll be closed now, for the night.”
“I know the guard; he’ll let me in.”
“This really can’t wait?” Beth said, though she knew her husband well enough to know that whatever it was, it couldn’t.
“Be back in no time,” he said, before adding, “and, by the way, I’m taking Champ with me.”
He was thumping back down the stairs before she could even think to ask why he’d want the dog along.
Fortunately, Champ loved going for a ride; Carter had only to open the side door of his Jeep and Champ leapt up onto the front seat, ready for anything.
And would he be ready for what Carter wanted him to do? Carter put the car into gear, backed out of the driveway, and hoped that this wasn’t the craziest idea he’d had yet.
At the museum, the parking lots were closed, so he had to leave the car on Wilshire. He had a plastic passkey to the employee entrance, and he led Champ inside. He knew Hector would be on duty somewhere, and he didn’t want to give the poor guy a heart attack by coming upon him unexpectedly.
“Hector?” he called out. “It’s Carter. Carter Cox.”
There was no answer.
“Hector? You here?”
Champ was fascinated by all the smells from all the feet that had trampled over the museum floor that day, and Carter was encouraged to see his head down, nose fixed. Maybe this would work, after all.
He led the dog toward the rear elevators, past the lighted display of the dire wolf skulls, past the open lab, past the entrance to the lush atrium garden where Geronimo used to like to wander, and tried calling out again. “Hector? You around?”
He heard the jangling of a key ring, and a tentative voice saying “Who’s there? Don’t move!”
“Hector, it’s me — Carter. Don’t freak out.”
Hector, breathing a sigh of relief, emerged from behind the life-size replica of the giant sloth being attacked by a saber-toothed cat.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Hector said. “The museum’s closed. And Mr. Gunderson, he gave me special instructions about you.” Then he noticed the dog. “And are you crazy? You can’t bring a dog in here.”
“I had to,” Carter said.
“Why? Why you need to bring a dog into the museum, at night?”
Carter recognized that he was going to have to do some fast, and persuasive, talking, if he hoped to get Hector’s cooperation. “I need him to help me find something.”
Hector waited, unimpressed. “Find what?”
Carter knew that this was an important moment — if he let Hector know what was missing, and Hector shared his secret with Gunderson, all hell would break loose. But if he didn’t tell him, it would be impossible to do what he had to do.
“Some bones are missing, from the collection downstairs. Some very important bones.”
Now Hector started to look concerned. Anything that went missing, especially if it could be tracked to his watch, potentially spelled trouble. “You report this?” he asked, hitching his belt back up over his belly.
“Not yet,” Carter confessed. “I was hoping I could find them first. Or at least figure out what happened.” And then, in a low blow that he regretted giving, he said, “You’ve been so helpful about granting me access downstairs, even after hours, that I was hoping we could solve the problem before either one of us had to answer any questions from Gunderson, or the police.”
Hector wasn’t stupid, and he immediately surmised where Carter was going with this. Cooperate, and maybe the problem could be made to go away, or stick to the rules and risk all kinds of shit coming down. Why, he wondered, had he ever let Carter, and that friend of his with the long white hair, slide? He didn’t even like Big Macs that much.
“What do you need to do?” he said, and Carter inwardly exulted.
“Not much. I just need you to take us downstairs again, to the lower level, for a few minutes.”
Hector hesitated, wondering if this was in fact a way of getting himself into even deeper trouble, then turned toward the elevators with his keys in hand. He would stick right by this guy — and his dog — and make damn sure nothing else went wrong.
Carter and Champ followed him into the elevator, and Carter, afraid of saying the wrong thing, kept his mouth shut all the way down. When the doors opened, he said, “You can just wait here, if you want,” but Hector wasn’t going to chance anything else going wrong.
“I’m coming with you,” he said. “And that dog better not do anything — and you know what I’m talking about — down here.”