Craig Smith - Cold Rain

We had two cats that had died on us, Pollock and Picasso, and a hamster named Susie. There were two stray dogs already in the earth. They had got hit before we could adopt them: Gilgamesh and Ulysses. I buried the murdered dogs deep in the earth in seven separate holes. Molly left me alone until I had finished. I was tamping down the last, Melville’s grave, when she came out to join me. She smiled at my work, which we both knew was partly for Lucy’s benefit and partly for my own.

‘Lucy hasn’t come out of her room since she found them this morning.’

‘She found them?’ I had been hoping it had been otherwise.

Molly nodded.

‘She got home around midnight. She says she didn’t hear the dogs, but she didn’t think anything about it.’

I understood how she could miss it. The racket they made, had made, was so familiar you didn’t really hear it. It was the silence you noticed. But I understood why Lucy had missed it.

‘So they were dead by midnight? Weren’t you around?’

‘I heard them barking. I thought it was the wind upsetting them.’ Molly began shaking her head as tears formed on the rim of her eyes. ‘They were just mutts!

They weren’t hurting anyone!’

I didn’t bothering responding. I was thinking about Buddy holding his gun against my face, the words he spoke. ‘You and me… we’re going to have some fun before I’m finished with your ass.’

Before I left, Molly showed me the work she had done on Lucy’s apartment. Over coffee she told me someone had made an offer on one of our rentals.

When we had finished with business there was nothing left to say, so I went upstairs and knocked on Lucy’s bedroom door.

She was on the phone and took a minute before she let me in. When she did I told her I had identified each grave, but I wanted her to paint the names on the stones, the way we had done it with the others. That was when she started crying. She cried just like her mother, wiping the tears away, half in embarrassment, half in fury.

I asked her about the night before. She had been at a party. Home at midnight? Pretty much about then, she said. There was no mystery to chase down, except the motive, and Lucy couldn’t help me with that. ‘Have you talked to your mother about the grass, kid?’ I studied her face. This was standard operating procedure. Silence drilled her conscience.

‘I’m careful, Dave. I mean I don’t do it all the time like some kids. And I don’t like lose control.’

‘You need to come clean with your mother. Knowing her, she’s probably just waiting for you to show her you’re honest with her.’

‘What if she grounds me?’

I shrugged indifferently. I’d love to be grounded. I’d take any excuse to move back in with the two of you.

‘Does it matter that much? I mean… are you seeing someone?’

‘No.’

Between lying salespeople and lying customers eager to promise me anything if I would just let them go home and think about it, I had developed an excellent feel for liars. The standard assumption in the industry was summarized in the acronym APAL: All People Are Liars. The trouble with such universal cynicism is sometimes people will let the truth slip out when they’re not careful. You need to know how to separate the gold from the brass. The look-you-in-the-eyes effect was the general method for most amateur liars. With Lucy, who was not a very good liar, the eyes darted first and then they stayed frozen on me.

If she was seeing somebody it was all right. She was seventeen. At seventeen that’s what you do. But she was lying to me about it. Or not sure herself.

‘But you might want to?’

She smiled. ‘Maybe.’

‘You see him last night?’

‘It was a party. He was there.’

‘And he smokes grass?’

‘He’s not a pothead, Dave. He’s a nice guy.’

‘We’re all nice guys, Lucy. That’s how we get to be with nice girls. What’s his name? How old is he? What kind of grade point average does he have? Does he know I have a couple of shotguns in my office and I’m not afraid to use them?’

Lucy sneered. ‘I’m not even going out with him!’

‘Yet.’

She smiled prettily, a girl with a lot of hope. ‘He’s just a guy, Dave. Give me a break.’

‘Talk to your mother. Tell her about the pot.’

As I was leaving she called to me. ‘Are the horses going to be all right, do you think?’

I looked at the doorjamb and thought about it: Jezebel with a tendon cut, Ahab’s neck slit open. ‘I don’t know, Lucy. If they wanted to hurt the horses I guess they could have last night.’

‘Why would somebody kill the dogs? If they wanted to hurt us why not the horses?’

That was when it came to me: Buddy Elder had gone after our alarm system.

Before I left I told Molly to keep her revolver close. ‘Whoever hurt the dogs,’ I said, ‘might be back for you.’ I said the best thing would be for me to move back in, if she would let me. To my surprise Molly said she’d think about it.

I got back to town at dusk. I went directly to the house on Ninth Street where Denise Conway and Buddy Elder lived. A girl answered the door. She was over-weight but the right age and disposition to be one of Denise’s friends from work. Her kid came up behind her as we talked and stared at me curiously. ‘Denise Conway live here?’ I asked.

The girl shook her head. ‘Not no more.’

‘Actually, I was looking for Buddy Elder. You know where I can find him?’

‘He moved out too. They broke up.’

I tried to get some information from her, but she had been warned. She wanted my name. She wanted to know what my business was. I told her my name was Ralph W. Emerson. I wanted to talk to Buddy about some dead poets. She thought that was strange.

I had her write down my cell phone number and told her to tell Buddy to give me a call, if he had the guts.

I was almost back to Walt’s apartment when my phone trilled. ‘The W. stand for Waldo, does it, Ralph?’

Buddy asked.

‘Where are you living these days, Buddy?’

‘Denise and I broke up, thanks to you, Dave. I got a new place. Just trying to get my head together, start over. You know how it is, I expect.’

‘I’d like to come by and talk to you about a few things.’

Buddy gave me his address. I turned my truck around and went back into town. The lights were off in the house, and I was not sure Buddy actually lived there until I knocked at the door. From the darkened house I heard Buddy’s voice. ‘Door’s unlocked, Dave.’

I opened the door and looked into the darkness.

‘You hiding?’ I asked.

‘A long time ago a cop told me if I ever shot a man breaking into my house I better make sure he falls completely inside. Half-in and half-out isn’t good enough. You want to come on inside?’

‘Are you going to shoot me?’

Buddy laughed cheerfully. ‘If you come inside I am!’

He walked to the door. Barefoot, wearing jeans and a T-shirt, he held a nickel-plated. 38 revolver. I was guessing it was the same gun he had pulled on me outside The Slipper. As before, he pointed it at me with keen pleasure.

‘Where were you last night, Buddy?’

‘Why do you want to know?’

‘Someone killed our dogs.’

‘Your dogs? All of them?’ I didn’t answer. He shook his head, his eyes locking on mine without the pretence of sincerity. ‘That’s just a shame, Dave. A real shame.’

I pointed at his gun. ‘That’s not going to save you, Buddy. When you need it, you’re not going to have it.’

The street lit up from the lights of a car, and Buddy shifted his gaze from me for a second. ‘I don’t care what anybody says, the cops in this town are good!’

He stepped back into his living room and set his revolver under the cushion of the couch. I turned and walked off the step as the two policemen got out of their patrol car, their spotlight on me.