Linwood Barclay - Lone Wolf

“Hold out the buckets.”

“Fuck no. I’ll set them down here. You fill ’ em up. I think I’ll just wander over there and vomit.”

The guts slid off the shovel and into the first pail.

“You’re telling me these dogs love this stuff?”

“Like candy,” I said.

I worked the shovel into the hole again, got a load for the second bucket, and dumped it in.

“Alpo would’ve worked fine,” Lawrence said. “And it wouldn’t have stunk anywhere near as bad.”

“This stuff’ll slide right down their throats like Jell-O,” I said. “They won’t even have to chew it.”

“I really don’t feel well,” Lawrence said.

“Drop the mikes in.”

Lawrence tossed one into each bucket.

“They expensive?” I asked.

“Don’t even ask.”

“And you say they’re moisture resistant?”

“Supposed to be. Although I doubt the prototypes were ever subjected to this kind of test.”

“If it works, how long do you think they’ll be useful?” I asked.

In the moonlight, I could see Lawrence shrug. “How long’s it take for something to go through a dog?”

“Twelve hours maybe? I hate to tell you, but the Wickenses don’t strike me as stoop-and-scoop people. You’re not gonna be getting these back.”

“Your loss. I was going to give them to you.”

Once I had a couple of inches in guts in each pail, I shoved the shovel blade back into the dirt pile. Lawrence was being so squeamish, I didn’t bother to ask him to grab the pails.

“Let’s go feed our puppies,” I said. “Do you think you could manage to throw some dirt over those exposed guts and drag the shutter back over the hole?”

“Uh, no thanks,” said Lawrence. “I don’t mind offering my detection services for free, but there are limits to what I’ll do.”

I decided I could deal with the hole later and led Lawrence through the trees toward the wire fence that surrounded the farmhouse. The house sat about thirty yards away, and we were looking at it from the side. It looked peaceful and ominous at the same time. Lights were on downstairs and up, and even from here, you could hear the soft sounds of people talking inside. The barn, off to the right, was a black square on a black canvas, large and foreboding. The only outside light was over the door on the front porch to our left.

“What if the dogs aren’t outside to eat this shit?” I said.

“They gotta let them out at some point before they all go to bed,” Lawrence figured.

We’d also brought along a wire coat hanger that I’d untwisted so I had a long hook with which to lower the pails over the fence. Carefully, I set them into position without letting them tip over. Lawrence and I moved a few feet back from the fence, stood there in the quiet night, and stared at the house.

“Come on,” Lawrence said under his breath. “Let those bastards out.”

Every minute or so, a light wind would come up, and the smell of fish guts would waft our way.

After five minutes of staring at the house, I said, “It’s going to take me a while to get my head around this thing with Dad, and Orville. You think you know everything, then you realize you don’t know shit. My mother, she was a good person.”

“I’ll bet she was.”

“But she kept secrets her whole life.”

“That’s what people do,” Lawrence said.

I thought about that. “Even you?”

In the moonlight, I could see the corners of his mouth go up a notch. “Especially me. My dad, he never knew my full story.”

I remembered my visit to the hospital, when Lawrence lay near death in the intensive care ward, and the chat I’d had with his sister Letitia. “Your sister made mention of that. She gave me the sense that you kept your secret from your father not so much to protect yourself as to spare him.”

“He was a good man,” Lawrence said. “He just wouldn’t have understood. I’m who I am. I don’t expect the whole world to change to suit me.” Lawrence squinted. “Door’s opening.”

I trained my eyes on the farmhouse. The porch door swung open, a woman’s voice. Charlene, I thought.

“Away ya go,” she said.

And out bolted Gristle and Bone. The huffed and snorted as they bounded down the steps, each starting to go his separate way, and then, almost simultaneously, they froze.

“Jesus,” said Lawrence. “Look. They’ve caught the scent already.”

The dogs, still standing in the glow of the porch light, a couple of nightmarish beasts of the night, raised up their heads, sniffed the air. Gristle glanced at Bone (or the other way around, I couldn’t be certain), and then, as if on cue, they started running in tandem.

Right toward us. Or at least, I hoped, the two buckets that were between them and us, on the other side of the fence.

Once they were on the move, we could barely see them, just dark shadows barreling quickly across the ground, closing the distance. They were to the buckets in seconds, both going to the one on the left at the same time, trying to jam their heads into it. But then Bone pulled his head out, saw the other bucket only a few feet away, and shifted over.

They had their heads in the pails for nearly a minute, slopping up the guts and bones and fins, these canine garbage suckers. Gristle knocked his bucket over, pushed it around with his head, trying to get every last morsel.

“Shit,” said Lawrence. “If he pushes that bucket too far, we won’t be able to retrieve it. We can’t have anyone seeing those buckets there in the morning.”

When Bone was done, he ran off in the direction of the barn, and his buddy followed. I used the straightened coat hanger and managed to get both pails back over the fence. Carefully, so as not to be seen from the farmhouse, I shone the light into both of them.

“Nothing left,” Lawrence said, rubbing his hands together. “Not a scrap, not a single bone, and no mikes. I’ll get my toys set up and we’ll see if this is going to work.”

“You know, this is crazy,” I said. “But I’m just a tiny bit hungry. Did we even have dinner?”

I kept my spot by the fence while Lawrence ran back to the cabin for the tools of his trade. He was back in under ten minutes with his two cases. From the larger one he pulled out the laptop, which he made sure, when he opened it, wasn’t facing the house. Didn’t want them seeing a tiny square of blue light off in the distance. In the same case he had two sets of headphones and some other gear. He handed me one set of phones, which I slipped around my neck, and he did the same with his. He got his shotgun microphone from the other case and gave it to me.

“Point that at the house, holding it steady as you can. I’m not quite ready yet, but it’ll help me do other stuff if you can do that.”

“Sure,” I said, holding the gun with both hands. “This is about my skill level right here.”

Lawrence began tapping away at the laptop, moving the cursor around, opening boxes. I didn’t have the foggiest idea what he was doing. “Do I need to have any of this explained to me?” I asked.

Lawrence didn’t even look at me. “No.” He slipped on his headphones, as if doing a test, then took them back off. “The first thing we’re going to want to know is whether the dogs scarfed down those bugs without destroying them.”

I watched the farmhouse. Soft sounds emanating from within, a shadow passing by a window. The dogs appeared out of the darkness, bounding up the porch steps and scratching at the front door, bumping into one another. Someone, I couldn’t tell who, opened the screen enough to let them slip inside. “Hey, boys!”

“They’re back in,” I said.

“I think we’ve only got one,” Lawrence said, pulling one side of the headphones away from his ear. “I’m picking up one mike, but not the other. It must have got chewed right through.”