A. Rich - The Hand That Feeds You

Billie knelt in front of the dogs and began singing a kind of lullaby to them, but in German. The dogs sat at attention, their eyes on Billie. Still singing to the dogs, Billie produced two slipknot leads and told me to loop them around the dogs’ thick necks.

“Heidi and Gunther won’t do anything without my permission.”

“So these are your dogs.”

“I belong to them as much as they belong to me.”

“ Sitz ,” Billie commanded.

The dogs sat.

“ Pass auf .”

The dogs growled low in their throats.

She put her gun in her purse.

The dogs were attack-trained. I knew enough German from school to know that the second command meant “guard.” I hoped they were not waiting for the command Reeh veer , “hunt.” If Bennett’s body were exhumed, I knew now that the bite marks would match the teeth of Billie’s dogs.

I raced through the methods I had learned to disarm an attacker. I was outnumbered, so I had only two options: try to humanize myself in Billie’s eyes, or run for safety if I could reach a safer place within five seconds. I had already failed at the first option. Before I could try the second, Billie ordered me to unlock a third kennel. I glanced at the kennel card above it and saw in the fractured light the red-inked word CAUTION — SEVERE.

“Morgan, meet Gotti,” Billie said conversationally. “He is three years old and on hold for biting. Gotti, Morgan is a thirty-year-old female who is here for not seeing what was right in front of her.”

A low growl came from Gotti. I was about to credit him for picking up on Billie’s vibe, but then the two Dogos moved into view. Billie had not issued a verbal command for them to approach, and she yelled, “ Sitz .” One dog sat immediately, one walked behind Billie to assume the position on her other side. Gotti barked at the trio just outside his kennel door.

Billie told me to get inside. With a last rush of adrenaline, and everything to lose, I moved to the door of the cage, and just before slamming it behind me, I yanked Billie’s purse off her shoulder, breaking the leather strap.

I had the gun. I also had the key ring. I locked myself inside.

There was an odd lull — the other dogs in the ward stopped barking as though they sensed a shift in command.

The dog beside me was standing, taller than I was in my crouch. I had enough room to stand up and move a couple of feet back from the door. I said, “Good dog,” over and over, a mantra. Gotti was a large brindle pit bull. His ears had been cropped too close to his head and had a yeasty smell, evidence of infection.

I slipped my hand into Billie’s purse and closed it around the handle of the gun. But the dog did not attack. I reached for my cell phone and pressed 911.

“What is your emergency?” a woman’s voice asked.

“I need help. I’m at the animal shelter annex on 119th near the river.”

The phone went dead, but I didn’t know when — before or after I had given my location. But Billie didn’t know that.

“I’m in Ward Four,” I said to the dead phone. “A woman with attack dogs is holding me hostage.”

I had kept my eyes on Billie while I spoke. At this last, she rolled her eyes and said, “You locked yourself in.”

“Please hurry,” I said to the dead phone.

“I’m disappointed in you, Gotti. You didn’t keep up your end.” Billie acted as if I did not have a gun pointed at her.

“The police will be here any minute,” I bluffed.

“There’s no signal here. Nobody’s plan works in here.”

She sat down cross-legged in front of the cage, just as she had done when visiting my dogs. “We never had a chance to compare notes about Bennett,” she said brightly. “You’d been studying men who manipulate women, but the real fun starts when a woman manipulates a man to manipulate women.”

“What did you get out of it?” I asked, genuinely curious.

“What didn’t I get out of it? He entertained me. With all of you. You can’t imagine how thrilling that kind of intimacy is. It is allegiance of the first order, a singular exchange. We held nothing back. We did not judge each other. Well, until he went soft.”

The Dogos were spooking the pit bull. His hackles stood. He started snarling, though nobody had moved.

“I bet sleeping next to the wall isn’t looking so scary right now. Don’t blame Bennett for making you do that; it was my idea. That was getting to be his problem: no ideas. He was wasting his energy on you. When he stopped making fun of you and began to defend you, the fun went out of it. Sure, you take in foster dogs. But you get them killed.”

She had gotten my fosters killed. Not the time to point that out.

“Still, he was drawn to virtue. He may not have felt compassion, but he began to seek it out. And the boy went overboard — he called it ‘love’ and proposed to all of you.”

I still held the gun on Billie but my hand was tired. Billie noticed. I leaned against my side of the cage, and Gotti remained standing inches away.

“You want to know what happened that morning. Fair enough. He wasn’t so far gone on you that he didn’t welcome my visit to your bed. He was less welcoming to Heidi and Gunther. But as I told him, they had a vet appointment later that morning. I told him to put your dogs in the bathroom, and it wouldn’t be a problem. But there was a problem: he couldn’t get it up. That was a first. And he blamed it on me. I did this, I did that, and I brought the fucking dogs. The fucking dogs.

“I had left them outside the bedroom door in a down-stay. I got out of bed, pulled on my clothes, and Bennett failed to apologize.”

The dog whose kennel I shared sniffed the gun and lost interest in it.

Billie had answered my questions, except for one — was I going to have to kill her?

“You going to write me up for your thesis? I’m more interesting than Bennett.”

She was interrupted by the dogs in the ward, all of them, barking. Then I heard what had set them off. I thought I did — I thought I heard a man’s voice call out from somewhere inside the shelter. I strained to hear, and I heard it again. Billie did, too. A man’s voice, a little closer this time, called out so that we could hear the words: “Police! Is anyone there?”

Billie put a finger to her lips and looked out the wired-glass window in the ward door. Her dogs turned their heads in unison, keeping her in sight.

Billie ducked as the beam of a flashlight shone through the window.

I screamed, “I’m in here!”

“This next is on you.” Billie opened the ward door and said to her dogs, “ Reeh veer! ”

They tore out into the hall, synchronized specters, their full attention on their prey.

Billie followed her dogs.

It sounded as though every dog in the place was barking. The noise disoriented me so that I couldn’t pick out Billie’s dogs from the rest, if Billie’s dogs were even making a sound during their attack. But I could hear one of the cops yelling. Then he screamed. Why hadn’t he used his gun? But I hadn’t used my gun.

“Good boy,” I said to my cellmate as I unlocked the kennel door.

The cop was on the ground, but he was no longer screaming. I couldn’t tell if he was still alive, but the white dogs on top of him — I saw them in the dimly lit hall — were covered in blood.

I crept up behind Billie, intending to clock her with the gun I could not make myself fire. I would have to hit hard enough to keep her down. But if I whacked her, what would her dogs do? I had never hurt anyone, nor did I have the skill to hit a moving target. The thought made me sick to my stomach. Then I saw, to the left of me, the door into the fenced exercise yard. When I got out into the yard without Billie’s seeming to see me, I had a thought I almost couldn’t bear in case it didn’t work: maybe I could get a signal on my phone.