He shook his head.
“What are you up to?”
“Uh… homework?”
“Sure,” Sandy said, nodding as if she believed him. “No more games until your homework is done. I mean it.”
“Okay, Mom.” He rubbed his left jaw as if it hurt, but she couldn’t worry about that now. Maybe his molars were coming in or something.
Sandy dug out her cell phone and called Mrs. Kobritz. Mrs. Kobritz lived by herself in an old farmhouse south of town, not too far from the Einhorns. Sandy listened to the phone ring and started to realize that if Mrs. Kobritz didn’t answer, she would have to drive out to Mrs. Kobritz’s house. That meant she would have to drive past the Einhorn place, something she wasn’t looking forward to. The phone continued to ring. She didn’t expect an answer. Mrs. Kobritz didn’t own a cell phone. She didn’t even have an answering machine.
As Sandy listened to one ring after another in Mrs. Kobritz’s empty house, a tight ball of apprehension began to grow in her chest. Mrs. Kobritz and her late husband never had any children of their own. The old widow would never simply not answer her phone, no more than she would ever leave a child alone. The more the phone rang, the more Sandy became convinced that something had happened.
Sandy was just about to hang up when the connection clicked and opened, and Mrs. Kobritz was on the other end, all breathless and frantic.
“Hello, hello?”
“Mrs. Kobritz? This is Sandy. I—”
“Oh thank God it’s you. Please, you have to come help me.”
“Are you okay? I—”
“Please, please come help me look for him. I don’t know what happened.”
“Look for who?”
“Puffing Bill, of course. He’s gone. Please, I have to find him.” Puffing Bill was the pit bull Mrs. Kobritz had picked up from the animal shelter a few months after her husband had died. Cops had found the dog at the end of some country road. Mrs. Kobritz had instantly named the dog after her father’s favorite train engine. Her father was a huge train buff. The entire second floor of Mrs. Kobritz’s childhood home was taken over by a massive model train layout. She knew her father had seen some awful things after landing in France during D-Day, and although he never spoke of his experiences, he’d found a release for all that stress by playing with his trains. He favored the trains of the Wild West, mostly the Jupiter trains, but his absolute favorite had been the very first steam locomotive ever built, Puffing Billy, from England.
That’s where the name originated. It was better to tell people the story of the name, instead of where the dog himself had come from. He’d survived the life of a fighter and had gotten loose somehow, instead of being shot, clubbed to death, or used as bait to stoke a stronger dog’s bloodlust. When he’d been found, he’d been all chewed up and damn near dead. The vets donated their time and patched him up, but ultimately had to amputate his front right leg.
Once it healed, it didn’t slow him down much at all. He got used to a quick hopping motion to move around, and before long, he could move quicker than any human. It didn’t look like he felt his past wounds at all. Savage scars from ripping teeth had been torn across his body. Most of his lower lip was gone. His harsh, whistling way of breathing had also contributed to the name of Puffing Bill.
Mrs. Kobritz loved that dog like the child she’d never had.
Sandy tried again. “Mrs. Kobritz, I don’t—”
“He’s been gone since I let him out this morning! You have to help me.” It came out plaintive, stripped of any pretense, straight down to the naked need, pleading with Sandy to make everything all right and bring her dog home.
“This is really a job for the animal control officer, let me call him—”
“That man would not know his own ass from a hole in the ground.” For Mrs. Kobritz, this was pure blasphemy, worse than if a demon had possessed her and proclaimed to the town that Satan fucked her in the ass every Sunday morning before church and she was enjoying the living hell out of it. “And you know it.”
Sandy didn’t know what to say. She certainly couldn’t argue with Mrs. Kobritz. The animal control officer, Mark Higgins, was a sloppy drunk who was more than happy to catch neighborhood dogs and exterminate them to pump up his quota and justify his salary. She sighed. “Fine,” she said eventually. “I’ll be out as soon as I can.”
She hung up and dialed Elliot’s parents, Randy and Patty, and asked if she could drop Kevin off. They were over the moon that their son had a friend, and would do anything to help. Sandy called up the stairs to Kevin. “Grab your toothbrush and pj’s and anything else you need. This might take a while.”
Technically, she was off the clock. Despite Sheriff Hoyt’s insinuation that she was rarely on duty, she’d spent too much time at work this week already, and that made the union and the folks at OSHA nervous. And technically, she shouldn’t have been driving the cruiser. She shouldn’t have still been in her uniform.
But Sandy figured being chief superseded all that and besides, no civilian was going to complain. Instead, she worried if she was pushing her luck by slowing as she approached the Einhorn place. She wanted to see the circus firsthand but knew she shouldn’t risk being seen. She should be going so fast that if somebody happened to glance down the driveway, she would be nothing but a blink of headlights in the last faint glimmer of summer light.
Being on duty a few hours too many could be overlooked. Spying on cops working a crime scene was another thing. She chewed this over and kept the needle at sixty miles per hour as the cruiser passed County Road E and knew she had just over thirty seconds until she passed the Einhorn place. She took her foot off the gas.
Even though she’d decided to sidestep this particular hurricane, she was still curious. She flicked off the lights and coasted in darkness.
As she got closer, Sandy knew they hadn’t found Ingrid. If they had, the place would be quiet. Now, it was ablaze with raised lights. Stuttering sparks of camera flashes drilled into the night as Mike, the county forensics investigator, did his best to document everything. Lots of lights. But no sirens.
The cruiser slowed until it almost rolled to a complete stop. She got a good look up the driveway. There was no question. Sheriff Hoyt and his boys were still looking for a body.
Lights flashed on the Johnson’s front porch and made Sandy jump. The front door opened and slammed. A young girl, maybe twelve or thirteen, which would have made her one of the older children, ran out into the front lawn. A split second later, Meredith’s stern silhouette filled the doorway. “You get back in here right now.” Her voice was like a steel bear trap, and with each word, it snapped shut. “You know very well you are not allowed outside this late. Get back in here and say goodnight to your father.”
The girl turned, clenched her fists, and stamped her foot. “He’s sick. I won’t touch him.”
“You will give him a kiss good night or you and I will visit the shed. Is that what you want?” It was too much for the girl to resist any longer. She lowered her head and started back to the house. Meredith suddenly noticed Sandy’s cruiser, sitting motionless on the highway. She called out, louder. “What are you doing out there, sitting in the dark?”
Sandy didn’t have much of an answer.
Meredith wasn’t listening anyway. “You don’t fool me, Chief Chisel. You mind your own business.” With that, she swept the girl inside and slammed the door.
Sandy feathered the gas and passed the driveway, still keeping the headlights turned off. She followed the road by starlight.
Mrs. Kobritz’s house was a half mile down. It was a relatively new house for the area, meaning it had been built in the last fifty years or so. The front yard was full of flowers and rainbow-colored wind wheels. They hung motionless in the headlights as Sandy parked the cruiser next to Mrs. Kobritz’s Toyota.