John Katzenbach - The Analyst

He heard the kennel owner swearing wildly, and then Ricky stepped out into the darkness himself, remaining in a shadow at the edge of the spotlight’s arc.

The man had been bowled over by the rush of animals, knocked back and down to one knee by the wave of dogs. He scrambled up, partially regaining his feet, searching for his balance. He was trying to catch them at the same time that they were jumping all over him, knocking him about. A welter of mixed beastly emotions-some dogs afraid, some joyous, some confused, all uncertain what was going on, knowing only that it was far out of the ordinary routine of kennel life, and eager to take advantage of it, whatever it was. Ricky smiled wickedly. It was, Ricky surmised, a pretty effective distraction.

When the kennel owner looked up, what he saw just behind the leaping, snuffling, tangled mass of animals was Ricky’s pistol leveled at his face. He gasped, rocking backward in surprise, as if the hole at the end of the barrel was as forceful as the flood of dogs.

“Are you alone?” Ricky asked just loud enough to reach past the dogs’ barking.

“Huh?”

“Are you alone? Is there anyone else in the house?”

The man caught on. He shook his head.

“Is Brutus’s buddy in the house? His brother or mother or father?”

“No. Just me.”

Ricky thrust the pistol closer to the man, close enough so that the pungent odor of steel and oil and maybe death could fill his nostrils, without needing to own a dog’s sensitive nose to understand what the potential was. “Persuading me that you’re telling the truth is important to staying alive,” Ricky said. He was a little surprised at how easy it was to threaten someone, but he had no illusion that he would be able to call his own bluff.

Behind the steel fencing, Brutus was in a paroxysm of fury. He continued to thrust himself at the metal, his teeth pressed up against the barrier. Foam streaked his jowls and his growl singed the air. Ricky eyed the dog warily. A hard thing, he thought, to be bred and raised for one single purpose, and then, when that moment came where all that training was supposed to coalesce, to be restrained by the frustration of a gate locked by a child’s bicycle chain. The dog seemed to be almost overwhelmed by impotence, and Ricky thought that it was a little bit of a microcosm for the lives of some of his ex-patients.

“It’s just me. Nobody else.”

“Good. Now we can have a conversation.”

“Who are you?” the man asked. It took a second for Ricky to remember that he’d been wearing a disguise on his first visit to the kennel. He rubbed his hand across his cheek.

I’m someone you’re going to wish you’d been more pleasant to on our first meeting, Ricky thought, but what he said was: “I’m someone you would probably rather not know,” simultaneously gesturing at the man’s face with his weapon.

It took a few seconds for Ricky to get the kennel owner where he wanted him, which was seated on the ground, with his back up against the gate to Brutus’s pen, hands out on his knees where Ricky could see them. The other dogs were wary of getting too close to the furious Rottweiler. By now, some had disappeared into the darkness and the countryside, others had collected near the owner’s feet, and still others were jumping about, playing with one another, on the gravel driveway.

“I still don’t know who you are,” the man said. He was squinting up at Ricky, trying to place him. The combination of the shadows, and the change in appearance worked to Ricky’s advantage. “What’s all this about? I don’t keep any cash here, and…”

“This isn’t a robbery, unless you think of taking information as a theft, which I used to imagine was in some ways the same,” Ricky answered cryptically.

The man shook his head. “I don’t get it,” he said flatly. “What do you want?”

“A while ago, a private detective came to see you with a few questions.”

“Yeah. So what?”

“I would like the same questions answered.”

“Who are you?” the man asked again.

“I told you. But right now, all you really need to know is that I’m a man with a gun, and you’re not. And the sole means you have of defending yourself is locked behind a fence and feeling pretty damn bad about it, too, from the looks of him.”

The kennel owner nodded, but seemed, in those few moments, to gain a wary confidence and a good deal of composure. “You don’t sound much like the type who will use that thing. So maybe I won’t say a damn thing about whatever it is you’re so damn interested in. Screw you, whoever you are.”

“I want to know about the couple that died and are buried down the road there. And how you acquired this place. And especially the three kids that they adopted, that you said they didn’t. And I would like to know about the phone call that you made after my friend Lazarus came to visit you the other day. Who did you call?”

The man shook his head. “I’ll tell you this: I got paid to make that call. And it was also worth my business to try to keep that guy here, whoever the hell he was. Too bad he split. I woulda had a bonus.”

“From who?”

The man shook his head. “My business, mister tough guy. Like I said, screw you.”

Ricky leveled the pistol at the man’s face. The kennel owner grinned. “I’ve seen guys who will use that thing, and fella, I’m betting you ain’t one of ’em.” There was a little bit of the nervous gambler in his voice. Ricky knew the man wasn’t completely certain one way or the other.

The gun remained steady in Ricky’s hand. He sighted down to a spot between the kennel owner’s eyes. The longer he held his position, the more uncomfortable the man seemed, which, Ricky thought, wasn’t unreasonable. He could see sweat on the man’s forehead. But, in the same respect, Ricky thought, every second he delayed buttressed the man’s reading of him. He thought to himself that he might yet need to become a killer, but didn’t know if he could kill someone other than the primary target. Someone merely extraneous and ancillary, even if obnoxious. Ricky considered this for a second, then smiled coldly at the kennel owner. There’s a noticeable difference, Ricky thought, between shooting the man who ruined your life, and shooting some cog in that machine.

“You know,” he said slowly, “you’re one hundred percent right. I haven’t really been in this position all that much. It’s pretty clear, to you, is it, that I don’t have a great deal of experience in this area?”

“Yeah,” the man said. “It’s damn clear.” He shifted his position slightly, as if he was relaxing.

“Maybe,” Ricky said with a singularly flat voice, “I should practice some.”

“What?”

“I said I should practice. I mean, how do I really know I will be able to use this thing on you, until I give it a bit of a workout on something a little less meaningful. Maybe significantly less meaningful.”

“I still don’t follow,” the kennel owner said.

“Sure you do,” Ricky answered. “You’re just not concentrating. What I’m telling you is that I’m not an animal lover.”

As he said this, he lifted the pistol slightly, and keeping all the hours on the practice range up in New Hampshire in mind, Ricky slowly took in a deep breath, calmed himself utterly, and squeezed the trigger a single time.

The gun bucked harshly in his hand. A single report scoured the air. It whined into the darkness.

Ricky guessed that the bullet struck a bit of the fencing and split apart. He could not tell if the Rottweiler was hit or not. The kennel owner looked astonished, almost as if he’d been slapped, and he covered one ear with a hand, checking to see whether the bullet had sliced him as it raced past.