He listened for the howling to switch to a snarl. But it did not. It kept on unheeding, not changing its maddening tone. It did grow louder, though, when the door finally opened.
The door opened and produced a fat man with a thin smile. Even the thin smile faded: the face of Stanley Hofer was evidently not that of someone he might have expected to see.
“Yes?”
“No.”
Stanley Hofer drew the revolver and fired into the man’s chest.
The man saw it coming but could not believe it. It must have seemed to him like something in a dream.
Stanley Hofer had wakened from his own dream. He had come here to kill the dog. His center of cunning had told him the law did not do much to a man for killing a dog. But the thin smile on the fat face had shown him that he had to kill the dog’s owner. Why blame the dog for behaving like a dog? Blame the man for behaving like ah uncivilized man.
The man flew back from the doorway, pulling the door wide before the knob slipped from his grip.
Stanley Hofer stepped inside and stood looking down at the body, not really seeing it. He was listening to the howling. Curious. He would have expected the shot and the smell of blood to evoke a frenzy of barking or a cowering silence. But the howling went on its unchanging way.
A woman in a fright wig of curlers and a short filmy shift came sleepily downstairs plucking ear plugs from her ears.
“What was that? I told you not to—”
She wakened to the fact that Stanley Hofer was not her husband and quickly folded her arms about herself. Then she saw the gun in Stanley Hofer’s hand and followed his gaze to the body. She moaned and fell in a faint at the foot of the stairs.
Stanley Hofer frowned. He stepped past her into the living room. The dog: he had come here to kill the dog and he would round out the job. What sort of dog was it that hung back and let a stranger come into its master’s home and kill its master?
Was it tied up? Was that why it howled? He looked for the shine of the dog’s eyes in the dimness but found only the throb of its voice. The wall switch was in the same place as in his own house. He flicked on the light.
He did not bear the patrol car pull up outside. He stood by the whirring reels, still trying to understand, when the policeman walked in.
Stanley Hofer put up as much fight as a clothing dummy when the policeman relieved him of the gun. He was dimly aware of the policeman verifying that the man was dead, and bringing the woman out of her faint, and phoning headquarters and talking to the woman.
Then the policeman was talking to him.
“Who are you? Where do you live?”
Stanley Hofer mumbled his name and, finding his hands cuffed behind him, pointed with his chin in the direction of his house.
“Why did you shoot Mr. Hayward?”
The night turned suddenly cold.
“Hayward? You’ve got it wrong, officer. I shot Strafuss. Lyman Strafuss.”
The policeman shook his head. He spoke as to a child.
“The man you shot is... was — Cal Hayward. Lyman Strafuss is the next-door neighbor.” The policeman reached over and switched off the tape player. The tape had run out anyway and the howling had stopped.
“Mrs. Hayward says her husband’s been complaining about Strafuss’s dog. When he found himself getting nowhere, he tape-recorded the howling. And for a week now, at three a.m., night after night, he’s been playing it back at full volume from a window facing the Strafuss house. Mrs. Hayward says the Strafuss dog doesn’t howl when the tape recorder plays. It just listens to the recording of its own howling. But it’s been getting to Strafuss. That’s why I’m here. Strafuss complained to the police.”
And now, with the tape recorder silent, the Strafuss dog resumed its howling.
A Handgun for Protection
by John Lutz
Once I had loved her, held her in my arms. Now there was only one tie between us — the tie between a killer and his prey...
I had to have her. Lani Sundale was her name, and for the past three Saturday nights I’d sat at the corner of the bar in the Lost Beach Lounge and listened to her, talk to her friends — another girl, a blonde — and a tall, husky guy with graying hair and bushy eyebrows. Once there was an older woman with a lot of jewelry who acted like she was the gray haired guy’s wife. They’d sit and drink and gab to each other about nothing in particular, and I’d sit working on my bourbon and water, watching her reflection in the back bar mirror.
It wasn’t until the second Saturday night, when she got a telephone call, that I learned her name, but even before that I was — well, let’s say committed.
Lani was a dark haired, medium-height, liquid motion girl, shapely and a little heavier than was the style, like a woman should be. But with her face she didn’t need her body. She really got to me right off: high cheekbones, upturned nose, and slightly parted, pouty little red lips, as if she’d just been slapped. Then she had those big dark eyes that kind of looked deep into a guy and asked questions. And from time to time she’d look up at me in the mirror and smile like it just might mean something.
The fourth Saturday night she came in alone.
I swiveled on my bar stool with practiced casualness to face her booth. “Where’s your friends?”
She shrugged and smiled. “Other things to do.” Past her, outside the window, I could see the blank night sky and the huge Pacific rolling darkly on the beach.
“No stars tonight,” I said “You’re the shiningest thing around.”
“You’re trying to tell me it’s going to rain,” she said, still with the smile. It was a kind of crooked, wicked little smile that looked perfect on her. “I drink whiskey sours.”
I bordered her one, myself a bourbon and water, and sat down across from her in the soft vinyl booth. Two guys down the bar looked at me briefly with naked envy.
“Your name’s Lani,” I told her. She didn’t seem surprised that I knew. “I’m Dennis Conners.”
The bartender brought our drinks on a tray and Lani raised her glass. “To new acquaintances.”
Three drinks later we left together.
It was about four when Lani drove me back to the Lounge parking Jot to pick up my car. Hard as it was for me to see much in the dark, I knew we were in an expensive section of coast real estate where a lot of wealthy people had plush beach houses, like the beach house I’d just visited with Lani.
She drove her black convertible fast, not bothering to stop and put up the top against the sparse, cold raindrops that stung our faces. What I liked most about her then was that she didn’t bother with the ashamed act, and when we reached the parking lot and the car had stopped, she leaned over and gave me a kiss with that tilted little grin.
“See you again?” she said as I got out of the car.
“We’ll most likely run across one another,” I said with a smile, slamming the heavy door.
I could hear her laughter over the roar and screech of tires as the big convertible backed and turned onto the empty highway. I walked back to my car slowly.
During the next two weeks we were together at the beach house half a dozen times. The place spelled money, all right. Not real big but definitely plush, stone fireplace, deep carpeting, rough sawn beams, modern kitchen, expensive and comfortable furniture. There was no place the two of us would rather have been, the way it felt with the heavy drapes drawn and a low fire throwing out its twisted, moving shadows. And the way we could hear that wild ocean, curl up moaning on the beach, over and over again. It was a night like that, late, when she started talking about her husband.