He prepared to climb the wooden fence when he thought better. Down there to his left, the sound was even closer, stronger. From that backyard two lawns down. He walked along the fence, and then he saw it, tangled in its chain, the doghouse scratched and bitten, splinters and blood spots on the lawn, an Irish setter, and the sound it made was chilling. Not a growl exactly, not a bark. Much lower, almost speaking, deep within its throat, long and drawn out, suddenly a sequence of quick choking, then that drawl-like laryngitic moaning. He stared at the bloody lips, the froth that dripped in great gobs from their corners, and as it stopped biting at the chain and went back to the bone-revealing sore that it was chewing on its left hind leg, he gripped the fence, peered down at the unmowed yard, and gasped, desperate to control the churning in his stomach. He'd seen what he could only term the face of evil. Later he would recollect how those peculiar words occurred to him. He'd judge and weigh them, hoping to condemn their wild emotion, but he knew that they were fitting. He had never seen such open, brutal, insane evil, and his instinct was to flee, to repel the image from his sight.
Instead, he rushed along the fence until he faced another backyard, climbing over, straining to see every portion of this yard in case there was a dog in here as well, but there was nothing, just a tiny plastic wading pool, and he ran past it, hurrying along the side until he reached the sidewalk in the front, and then he swung across the next yard toward the front door of the house in back of which the dog was baying even more grotesquely.
If he'd been the man he claimed to be, he would have known what next would happen, would have paid attention to the weed-choked lawn, the untrimmed bushes, would have understood the owner here. But he was taken up with urgency. He gripped the wobbly railing, charging up the stairs. On the porch, he pressed the doorbell, but the sound of a television blared out from the open windows so he couldn't hear the doorbell. He couldn't even hear the dog now, and he pressed the button once again, staring through the screen door past the open main door in there, toward the shadowy living room. He realized that the doorbell wasn't working. As a crowd cheered on the television, he banged at the screen door. He shouted, "Hey, is anybody home?", hammering so fiercely that the wood trembled and a shadow moved in there, pale against the murky sofa, a man coming to the door.
The man was husky, naked to the waist, a can of beer in one hand. He was surly, unshaven. "Yeah, what is it?"
"Look, your dog-"
"I know. The bastard won't stop barking.'
"It needs treatment."
"What?"
"You've got to get it to a vet," the medical examiner blurted.
"Up your ass. I told the neighbors I was working on it. Hell, I even got a special collar." "I don't-" "One with batteries. The kind that every time the dog barks sends a shock to stop it barking."
The medical examiner was speechless.
"Who the hell are you? I've never seen you anywhere," the man said.
"I'm…" The medical examiner explained who he was.
"You live around here?"
"No, I-"
"Then up your ass, I said. If this isn't where you live, why don't you mind your own damned business?"
There was no way that the medical examiner was going to make him understand. He gripped the door to pull it open, heading in.
"Hey, now wait a minute. What the hell do you think you're doing?" the man demanded, blocking him.
"I've got to use your phone."
"The beer store has one on the corner."
"There's no time."
The crowd cheered on the television. As the medical examiner squirmed to get past the man, he saw beyond the sofa where the television showed two boxers slugging at each other.
"Hey, buddy, I'm through being patient." The man shoved him hard.
"Rabies."
"Don't be nuts. The dog just had her shots."
"Christ, go back and look at her."
"The collar makes her act that way."
"I can't afford to take the chance."
The two men struggled toward the middle of the room.
"I have to phone a vet."
"If you're not out of here, you're going to have to phone an ambulance."
The medical examiner slipped past the man, dodging toward the phone that he had seen beside the sofa.
"Get out," the man ordered.
But the medical examiner was dialing.
"Okay, buddy, don't forget I warned you."
As a woman's voice came on the phone to tell him "Animal Associates," the medical examiner turned just in time to see the hand that held the beer can lunging toward him. He was vaguely conscious of the other hand that set him up and held him steady. But the blow that split his lips and shocked him backward he was never conscious of at all. He had a sense of someone moaning, and he wondered through the spinning darkness what that murky cheering was about.
FOUR
They ran with the bloodhounds up the steep slope through the trees. The dogs were silent, sniffing as they forged up higher, and the men who held their leashes were exhausted.
"This is crazy," one man said and pulled back on the leash to slow the dog. "If we keep on like this, we'll be useless in an hour."
He was gasping, taking in long breaths, exhaling like a bellows.
"Never mind an hour. Fifteen minutes is more like it," another man said and swallowed, breathing, reaching for a tree to get his balance. "I say take it slower."
They were five miles up from where they'd left the pickup truck. They hadn't organized the search until almost three o'clock. It took that long to get their knapsacks and their dogs. Then there had been instructions, and the dogs had needed time to find the scent. The search had really started at three-thirty. Running with the weight of knapsacks, rifles, walkie-talkies, and ammunition, they had labored through the forest, climbing bluffs and crossing ridges, stumbling down and up through gorges, and a tangle of dead timber had been just about enough to finish them. They had to carry each dog through the tangle, but the dogs had not refound the scent across there, and the men had struggled with the squirming dogs to carry them back to the first edge of the tangle. Bodine must have tried to cross, then given up. But they themselves had managed to get through here. Why not Bodine? "Never mind," one of the state policemen said. "Let's just keep moving."
So they had worked higher, and although they'd only gone five miles, they'd needed several hours.
"Christ, six-thirty."
"Hey, it must be time to eat."
"Another mile yet. If this guy's in trouble, one more mile could be enough to help him."
Which was understandable, so looking at the shadows stretching darker through the forest, they moved farther, higher, through the mountains. Slower, though. They couldn't run up ridges as if they were sprinting around the local baseball field. They knew their breathing should be constant, their heartbeats steady. Keep things smooth and even. They had hurried at the start, but that had been because they were impatient. Now that this had become routine, now that it was boring, they were moving much less frantically. Something broke a branch up to their right, and they were staring, but the deer that showed itself and ran away only made them laugh.
"I don't see why that guy went up here anyhow. If it was me, if I was chasing some wild dogs, I wouldn't try it on my own."
They heard the helicopter roaring closer. It had been a muffled droning far off to their right, but now it skimmed across the trees above them, and they saw the insignia of the U.S. Lands and Forest bureau.
"Air search to police," a man's voice crackled from the walkie-talkie.
They halted on an open bluff and squinted toward a line of trees that obscured the helicopter. They had little trouble hearing it, however.
Once again the static from the walkie-talkie. "Air search to police."