Linwood Barclay - Lone Wolf

“Can I listen?”

Lawrence told me to slip my phones on. This is what I heard:

“Pa-thump, pa-thump, pa-thump, pa-thump.”

“What the hell is that?” I whispered. There was another background sound, too, harder to pin down, but regular, almost a whistle.

“That would be DOS,” Lawrence said. “Dog Operating System. Heartbeat, breathing. I’m gonna see what I can do to filter some of that out.”

I listened some more. “ Pa-thump, pa-thump, pa-thump and that’s all pa-thump, pa-thump homework pa-thump dishes, beer over here pa-thump, pa-thump .”

“This is crazy,” I said. “You can’t hear a damn thing for the heartbeat. And it sounds like whichever dog swallowed the mike is roaming from room to room.”

“Zack, just chill,” Lawrence said, fiddling some more with his computer. “Okay, I’ve got your shotgun mike working now, so just focus it on the house. I’ll start coordinating the mikes, aim for the same thing from different directions. The dogs have had a good runaround. At some point, they should collapse and snooze. If one does, the other probably will.”

“They do share a brain,” I said.

On the headphones: “Hey, boy, howya doing. Fuck, what did you get into?”

Slightly muffled, but an actual entire sentence. Timmy, I figured, or one of Charlene’s sons. Commenting, no doubt, on the dog’s breath. After a meal of fish guts, you really needed a mint.

“There’s a blanket on the floor in the kitchen,” I whispered. “They curl up there.”

Lawrence stayed focused on his screen, which looked like a graph with different bars sliding up and down depending on what sounds came through the headphones. He made some adjustments with the cursor. The heartbeats, while still there, receded faintly into the background.

With the headphones on, my hands wrapped tightly around the shotgun mike, and watching the house so intently, I jumped when Lawrence tapped my knee. “Shit!” I said. “You just gave me a fucking heart attack.”

“Aim the mike more toward the back of the house. I think that’s where the kitchen is.”

“That’s right,” I said, recalling the layout from the dinner. I adjusted my aim ever so slightly. Lawrence held up his hand, indicating I should stop.

“Jeffrey!” Timmy, no doubt about it. Some shuffling, footsteps.

“Yeah?”

“…what…you…doing out of your room?”

“…get some water…”

“You’re grounded, buster…want out, you’ll hand over those figures.”

Lawrence shook his head. “Aww man, I never meant to get the kid in trouble,” he said softly. “Couldn’t he have just hid them from the get-go? Shit…”

Jeffrey again. “But I really like them.”

“Yeah, well, no water, no dessert, no nothing for you till you hand them over to me.”

“Jeez, Dad.” A different voice, not so deep, softer. This had to be May, unless Charlene liked to call her husband “Dad,” which seemed unlikely. I whispered to Lawrence, “The daughter, Jeffrey’s mom.”

May said, “What’s the big deal about a couple of little figures? So what if they’re black? They’re just-”

“As long as he’s…my roof, he’s going to live by my rules, and that…for you, too. Am I gonna have to take…belt to ya?”

“It’s…fucking nigger’s fault.”

Wendell or Dougie.

“…go back and kick his black ass…”

Lawrence didn’t flinch, just kept listening.

“No,” said Timmy. “We got more important things…do.”

“It’s not right, him gettin’ away with that. My neck’s still hurtin’.”

“Yeah.” The other brother. “And my back, I think it might be broken or something.”

“If your back was broken, you wouldn’t be standing there.” Timmy.

“You shoulda seen it,” Jeffrey said. “He had both of them on the ground in like seconds.” I thought I could detect a hint of admiration coming through.

Then some shouting. “Sorry,” Jeffrey said.

“It was wrong, what he did.” Another woman, but not May. Charlene. “You can’t tell my boys they can’t make this right. It’s their pride.”

A bang. Someone bringing a fist down on a table, maybe. “Not now!” Timmy, for sure.

I whispered to Lawrence, “You’re always causing trouble. I thought it was just me.” Lawrence waved at me to shut up.

“Put him to bed,” Timmy said. “Little shit’s gonna learn…for…all…”

Lawrence fiddled with his settings. We were losing the conversation. “Dog’s on the move,” Lawrence said. “Come on, boy, go back to the kitchen. Shit!”

The voices largely faded away. The little bit we were getting, I guessed, was from the shotgun mike in my hand.

For the next five minutes we got little more than the sounds of a dog patting around the house, a voice occasionally coming in, then fading out. We each had one ear covered with a headphone, the other exposed so we could talk more easily to one another.

“This is hopeless,” Lawrence said. “We’re going to have to come up with another plan.”

“Like what? Wanna say sorry to the boys with a delivery of Big Macs, you can sneak some bugs into the special sauce?”

Lawrence looked pissed and frustrated. And then, from the headphones, clear as a bell:

“I’m gonna head out to the barn.” Wendell, I thought. “I could use a hand.”

“Yeah,” said Timmy.

The dog had returned to the kitchen, and was, I suspected, curled up again on the rug. I was steadying the shotgun mike, about to slip the other half of the headphones into place, when I heard some rustling behind me.

“Lawrence,” I said.

A few feet off, something bumping into branches. I set the shotgun mike onto the forest floor and reached slowly into my inside jacket pocket, where I’d tucked the can of bear spray Dad had found in Leonard Colebert’s backpack.

“There’s something out there,” I whispered. I was holding my breath, and I was betting Lawrence was, too. More rustling in the trees, about fifteen yards off to the left, it sounded like. The idea of encountering the bear in the daytime was scary enough. But the thought of running into him at night, that was truly terrifying.

Lawrence was reaching into his jacket for something, too. If he’d brought along bear spray, I was unaware of it. But then I saw the moonlight glinting off something metallic, and it became evident that Lawrence had something more powerful than a small can of spray. He had a gun.

He wouldn’t want to be using it, I was pretty sure of that. The sound of a gun going off, that could draw the attention of the Wickenses in a hurry, possibly before we’d had a chance to clear away the surveillance equipment. If we were busy fending off a bear, we weren’t going to have much else to think about.

More rustling this time, a few steps closer.

Lawrence whispered. “Spray first. Then gun.”

I understood the reasoning, but didn’t much like the idea that I was to take the lead here. Wasn’t Lawrence the more likely man of action? And didn’t you have to get a lot closer to spray?

I raised my arm, my finger poised above the button that would release the noxious spray.

The trees rustled again, and then there was a thud, like whatever was out there had just taken a tumble.

And then: “Shit.”

Lawrence and I looked at each other. I’d seen a lot of bears perform tricks in circus acts, but I’d never heard one use foul language.

“Oh man,” the voice said again.

“For crying out loud,” I whispered. “It’s my dad.”

I slipped the bear spray back into my jacket, noticed Lawrence putting away his gun, then moved through the trees in the direction the sounds had come from.