"You're being politic. If it is Orph, then it's my responsibility. You told me in the beginning, when he was a pup, that I should be working with him.
I didn't. Now this has happened."
"Oh, I'm angry," she said. "That pack isn't at fault, nor is any other wild dog. Under the circumstances, they're behaving quite naturally.
The owners bear the moral guilt — only the animals have to do the suffering. But I'm not outraged at you. It is your fault-the attack on your son if nothing else-but you're not trying to sluff the blame onto the dog and excuse yourself. Everyone else does."
"I'd like to, I'll tell you that."
"Why? We're all responsible for our own actions. How society judges us doesn't mean anything, except in terms of crude pragmatism. How else are you going to forge your being except through internal confrontation? You don't find that in many people, and that's why most people aren't worth even having a drink with."
"You're a nice person," Bauer said.
"No, I'm not," she said. "I'm hard, I'm intolerant, I'm selfish and I'm grim. My husband called me a bloodless cunt. He tended to confuse beer-sweat with blood. Luckily we weren't married long enough for things to become hellish between us, only ugly. On the other hand, he was just the first to call me names. I seem to provoke that. But I respect my "self' too mach to live meanly or blindly, or to evade pain simply because it is pain."
Bauer laughed. "Christ, you are tough."
She'd worked herself up, features constricting defiantly, gaze finally losing Bauer and seeing past him to some shadowy incorporation she despised and that had cost her pain. She blinked, startled by her sudden return.
"I'm not a nice person," she said, "but I think I'm a decent person."
Then she laughed at her seriousness. "And I can't resist betting on horses, and I'm a movie addict-I don't care how bad it is, as long as it's on a screen and moves I love it-and I giggle uncontrollably when I'm tickled." She caught herself. "Strike that last, it's not an invitation."
"Who's your bookie?"
"Do you bet?"
"No, I was just striking your last. Have another drink, and I'm hungry and I'd like to order something, and it would be nice if you'd have dinner with me, and that's not an invitation, it's a statement."
"Fine. Get some menus."
They told each other a few things about themselves nothing revealing or intensely personal, but sufficiently biographical to mark the broad contours of themselves for each other.
In the parking lot, at the side of her car, Bauer said, "Those were a good couple of hours. I'm glad you spent them with me."
She took his hand, in the clasp of a possible friend. "It was nice, Alex.
You lifted me up."
"Well… Good night," he said.
"Good night. Thank you."
He drove home, alternately happy and depressed.
The sun had been up an hour. The pack had made a kill at sunrise, three young raccoons and their mother. The mother had bitten Orph on the shoulder and the spotted dog on the paw, but neither wound was serious. The black dog's ribs were knitting, lumpishly, but the pain was lessening and he could eat again. Their bellies were full, they were fresh and playful. The gray bitch was running tag with the spotted dog. The dun, in whelp, her belly lowering, nipped sassily at Orph. He consented to dance with her.
They batted each other.
Orph heard it first. He stopped nibbling on the dun bitch's whiskers.
He stood up and pricked his ears. His posture triggered the others to their feet. They listened, snuffed the air and looked about. A buzzing noise, coming nearer.
Orph found the direction but couldn't catch a scent. He looked up. A dark blur was moving against the sky. He had seen others on occasion, but they'd been very high and their sound faint in his ears. This one was wrong. It didn't belong. HP turned and led the pack trotting into a crowded stand of saplings, into the dark shade beneath the leaves.
Trooper George McHale followed the contour of the mountain, maintaining a steady altitude of 400 feet, banked slightly to the right to give a better field of vision to Attilio. Attilio had a pair of 8 X 32 binoculars pressed to his eyes.
"Anything?" McHale said over the drone of the single engine.
"Nothing, not a damn thing." Attilio knuckled his eyes a moment and pressed the binoculars back again. "I'm going blind," he said.
"This'll drive you crazy. We got any aspirins?"
"In the ditty bag."
I'll wait till we turn. Jesus, you could hide a fucking army down there.
You can't see anything through the leaves. If it was fall, we'd have 'em."
"Or out west. I flew the Rockies once. You can spot an animal a mile away."
McHale took them over the hump, made a wide, looping turn above High Falls Road, and started back. He unhooked the mike and depressed the stud.
Attilio rummaged for the aspirins.
"One-One-Foxtrot to Base. Come in, Base," McHale said.
"Base to One-One-Foxtrot," the radio replied. "We read you. Over."
"One-One-Foxtrot to Base. We've done Solomon's Point, Hanover, Little Cap Mountain, and Sector Bravo-Two Six Turning at High Falls Road now.
We'll be making a run over Sector Bravo-Two-Seven."
"Did you spot anything?"
"The volunteer line on Hanover, our people on Little Cap. A couple of cowboys with rifles moving up the west side of Hanover-you better inform our people so they can watch shots. But that's all. Oh yeah, Vie says to tell he saw a good flock of wild turkeys on Little Cap. He says you're a turkey hunter. Over."
"Acknowledged. The sheriff's department shot a dog on Balsam Cap half an hour ago. Definitely feral, but not one of the pack. Thought you'd like to know. Thank Vie for the turkey spot. Over and out."
Attilio had the binoculars up again. "I'm going blind, I tell you. I really am."
"Hold out till tonight. We're giving up then."
"It'll be too late," Attilio said.
"He's ours," Hazlett said to Mandelberg. "I know it in my bones."
Mandelberg watched a line of smoke curl up from his ashtray. "Would you know it in a court of law?"
"Well, ear notching isn't all that uncommon."
Mandelberg nodded. "But I agree, I think we have found our missing pup." He got out of his chair and walked to the window. A handler was taking a dog over a series of hurdles. Mandelberg watched. "What would happen if we publicly owned to that dog?"
"They'd want our heads on platters."
Mandelberg turned back to Hazlett. "Yes. If it got bad enough, we might even have to suspend operations here."
"Christ, it's only a dog, not a science-fiction monster."
"Tell that to the public."
"There are a million "pets' who'd respond exactly the same way in similar circumstances."
"That's one of my points. You've read the file, haven't you-alpha litter, King's Indian out of Karla von Hanekschloss?"
"Yes."
"This is a tough dog, and intelligent and independent. But is it a freak, a savage, bizarre in any way?"
"No."
"Actually, it's a pretty damn good dog. Maybe even the kind of animal dogs used to be ten thousand years ago five thousand, hell, a hundred years ago."
"And maybe not."
"Maybe," Mandelberg said curtly. "But the fact remains that we bred a dog.
A dog, nothing more, nothing less." His eyes focused on a patch of empty wall. "Just a dog." Carefully, he opened a new pack of cigarettes, removed one, and lit it. "So first, we have no moral responsibility here. Now, is there anything we could do, or tell these people, that would help them find the animal?"
Hazlett shook his head. "No. It's a matter of predator's habits, and hunting. The conservation department knows more about that than w, do."