John Katzenbach - The Analyst

He turned off the roadway and ducked beneath the canopy of trees, sliding past the kennel sign and the picture of the barrel-chested Rottweiler. Then he stepped off the driveway, into the shrub brush and greenery that hid the kennel from the highway, and carefully picked his way closer to the home and the pens. Still hidden by the foliage, staying back in the first dark shadows of the approaching night, Ricky removed the binoculars from the backpack and used them to survey the exterior, taking a better look at the layout than he had during his first, truncated visit there.

His eyes went first to the pen beside the main entrance, where he spotted Brutus on his feet and pacing back and forth nervously. He smells the DEET, Ricky thought. And behind that, my scent. But he doesn’t know what to make of it yet. For the dog, it was still simply in the category of out of the ordinary. He hadn’t yet approached close enough to be considered a threat. For a moment, he envied the dog’s simpler world, defined by smells and instincts and uncluttered by the vagaries of emotions.

Sweeping the glasses in an arc, Ricky saw a light click on inside the main house. He watched steadily for a minute or two, then saw the unmistakable wan glow of a television set fill a room near the front. The kennel office a little ways to his left remained dark, and, he guessed, locked. He made a final visual survey and saw a large rectangular spotlight near the roofline of the house. He guessed that it was motion-activated and that the field of range was directly in front of the house. Ricky replaced the glasses in his bag, and maneuvered parallel to the home, staying on the fringe of the underbrush, until he reached the edge of the property. A quick sprint would get him to the front of the kennel office, and perhaps would keep him away from triggering the exterior lights.

Not only Brutus was aroused by his presence. Some of the other dogs in their pens were moving around, sniffing the air. A few had barked nervously once or twice. Unsettled and unsure by a scent that was new.

Ricky knew precisely what he wanted to do, and thought that as a plan, it had virtues. Whether he could pull it off or not, he didn’t know. He was aware of one thing, which was that up to this point he’d only skirted illegality. This was a step of a different sort. Ricky was aware of another detail: For a man who liked to play games, Rumplestiltskin had no rules. At least none that were constrained by any morality that he was familiar with. Ricky knew that even if Mr. R. didn’t yet realize it, he was about to enter a little deeper into that arena.

He took a deep breath. The old Ricky would never have imagined being in this position, he thought. The new Ricky felt a single-minded, and coldhearted purpose. He whispered to himself: “What I was, isn’t what I am. And what I am, isn’t yet what I can be.” He wondered whether he had ever been anything that he was, or anything he was about to become. A complicated question, he told himself. He smiled inwardly. A question that once upon a time you might have spent hours, days, on the couch, examining. No more. He shunted it away deep within him.

Lifting his eyes to the sky, he saw that the day’s last light had finally slid away, and darkness was only moments from descending. It is the most unsettled time of day, he thought, and perfect for what he was about to deliver.

With that in mind, Ricky removed the small crowbar and the bicycle lock, and placed them in his right hand, gripping them tightly. Then he returned the backpack to his back, took a deep breath, and burst from the bushes, sprinting hard for the front of the building.

A bedlam of aroused dogs instantly creased the growing shadows. Yelps, howls, barks, and growls of all sorts and sizes pierced the air, obscuring the scrabbling sound his running shoes made against the gravel driveway. He was peripherally aware that all the animals were racing about in their small pen enclosures, twisting and turning with sudden dog excitement. A world of spastic marionettes, strings pulled by confusion.

Within a few seconds, he’d reached the front of Brutus’s kennel. The huge dog seemed to be the only animal at the kennel with any sort of composure and his was filled with menace. He was pacing back and forth across the cement floor, but stopped when Ricky reached the gate. For a second, Brutus eyed Ricky, his mouth open in a growl, his teeth bared. Then, with shocking speed, the dog leaped across the area, throwing all hundred-plus pounds against the chain-link fencing that kept him contained. The force of the attack nearly knocked Ricky over. Brutus fell back, now frothing with rage, then again thrust at the steel chains, his teeth clacking against the metal.

Ricky moved quickly, rapidly threading the bicycle lock around the twin posts of the kennel door, snatching his hands back before the animal had time to seize one, then securing it, spinning the lock combination and dropping it. Brutus immediately tore at the black rubber-encased steel of the chain. “Screw you,” Ricky whispered in a mocking tough guy accent. “At least you ain’t going nowhere.” Then he rose up and jumped over to the front of the kennel office. He thought he had only a few seconds left before the owner finally responded to the growing racket and din of arousal. Ricky assumed the man would be armed, but wasn’t sure of this. Perhaps his confidence in Brutus at his side would minimize his own need for weapons.

He thrust the crowbar into the doorjamb and snapped out the lock with a creaking, splintering noise as the wood broke. It was old, and showed some warping with age and broke easily. Ricky guessed that the kennel owner didn’t keep much of value in the office anyway, and didn’t really envision a burglar testing Brutus. The door swung open, and Ricky stepped inside. He swung the backpack around to his front, stuffed the crowbar inside and removed his pistol, quickly chambering a round.

Inside was an opera of dog anxiety. The racket filled the air, making it hard to think, but giving Ricky an idea. Clicking on his flashlight, he raced down the musty, foul-smelling corridor where all the dogs were penned, stopping to open each cage as he ran past.

Within seconds, Ricky was surrounded by a leaping, barking tangle of breeds. Some were terrified, some were overjoyed. Smelling, yelping, confused but all aware they were free. Some three dozen dogs, of all different shapes and sizes, unsure what was happening, but more or less determined to be a part of it nonetheless. Ricky was counting on that basic dog-think that doesn’t really understand all that much, but wants to be included in whatever is happening nevertheless. The sniffing and snuffling that flowed around and between his legs made him smile right through the nervousness of what he was doing. Surrounded by the pack of leaping, bouncing animals, Ricky returned to the kennel office. He was waving his arms, shooing the animals along, like some wildly impatient Moses at the edge of the Red Sea.

He saw the floodlight click on outdoors and heard a door slamming.

The kennel owner, he thought, finally roused by the racket, wondering what the hell has gotten into all the animals and not yet fully understanding that there might be a threat involved. Ricky counted to ten. Enough time for the man to approach Brutus’s pen. He heard a second noise, above the roused dogs: The man was trying to open the Rottweiler’s cage. A rattle of chain metal links and then a curse, as the man slowly grasped that the cage wasn’t about to open.

It was at that moment that Ricky threw open the front door to the kennel office.

“Okay, guys, you’re free,” he said, waving his arms. Nearly three dozen dogs bolted through the door, heading toward the warm New Jersey night, their voices raised in a confused song of joyous freedom.