Rottweiler Rescue (20 page)

“More years than either of us wants to admit,” Hettie said with a smile. “And we’ve worked on more gunshot dogs together than we’d like to admit either. It’s usually hunting dogs during the season. What happened this time?”

Seeing with a glance that I was beyond explaining, Deputy Carraher answered for me. “This was no accident. It was deliberate.”

Dr. Hunsaker motioned for silence and listened even more intently through the stethoscope, then looked at me. “She’s your dog?”

I nodded.

He asked me the usual questions about Sophie’s age, history and health, and I answered as best I could.

His last question was, “How much do you want us to do?”

I recognized veterinarian shorthand for
how much are you willing to pay
.

“I want you to
fix
her. So long as she’s not suffering for nothing and there’s any hope, I want you do anything you can.”

He nodded. “All right. You wait outside. I’ll let you know as soon as I can.”

I followed Deputy Carraher back to the waiting room and eased my aching body onto one of the hard plastic chairs.

“You surprised me, not arguing about waiting out here,” Deputy Carraher said. “I expected you to pitch a fit and want to stay with her.”

“I’m so filthy I shouldn’t be in an operating room, and if I pass out I don’t want them stopping to fuss over me.”

“Ah, that sounds more like the Rottweiler lady we all know and dread dealing with,” she said. “Now, you know I need to get enough information from you to fill out an accident report. If I go back there without it, I’ll be unemployed tomorrow.”

“Robo is still in your car.”

“I’ll go get him. Then will you cooperate?”

She left without waiting for an answer and returned with Robo and the blanket I’d left in the car. I wrapped the blanket around myself with gratitude, wondering if I’d ever feel warm again, then pulled Robo close. Indifferent as he was, his living presence was a comfort of sorts.

I did my best to answer the deputy’s questions and told her all about my visit to Feltzers, the flat tire, and Myron Feltzer’s black SUV.

“But you can’t say for sure it was a black SUV that hit you.” she said.

“No. I’m pretty sure it was an SUV — it had that square shape — and it was a dark color, but that’s all.”

Deputy Carraher sighed. “If only the dogs could talk. They could give us an i.d.”

At that moment Mrs. Hunsaker opened the waiting room door. “Oh, good, Rolland said he thought he saw another dog in the car. Your girl needs blood and we don’t have any dogs here that we can use as donors. Have you owned Sophie all her life? Has she ever had a transfusion?”

“I adopted her when she was five months old and she’s never had a transfusion since,” I said, “but I don’t know her blood type or his.”

“We can get away with transfusing her with unmatched blood once,” said Hettie. “It’s an advantage dogs have over people, and this is going to be Sophie’s time because if she’s going to make it she needs blood and she needs it now. Bring that big boy on back here.”

I started to get up, but Deputy Carraher put a hand on my arm. “You stay here so we don’t have to fuss over you. I’ll go with him, and I won’t let anyone hurt him.”

I sank back down gratefully and forced the horrific images of Sophie out of my mind by considering whether to call Susan and ask her to rescue Millie, home in the crate. Susan would have to drive up to my dark house, take the spare key out of its hiding place, and fumble for the lights. The killer had to know I was still alive. What if he was waiting at the house? Even if her husband or Wesley went with her, I couldn’t send them into that potential danger.

Unfair as it was, Millie was going to have to wait. Tomorrow I’d talk to Susan and tell her Millie needed to go to another foster home where she’d be safe.

When the deputy returned with Robo, her face was set in the same hard lines as the first time I’d seen her so many weeks ago, and she didn’t sit down again.

“I have to get back,” she said. “Is there someone I can call to come get you?”

Now that I knew she used that look to mask emotion, the change in her attitude frightened me.

“What did you find out?” I whispered. “Is she dead?”

“No, she’s not,” she said sharply. “They don’t really know anything yet. They’re still assessing.”

“Don’t do that to me. What did they say?”

She hesitated, scanned my face, then shrugged. “It’s pretty bad. Without the blood there’d be no chance at all, with it....” She shrugged again. “The first thing is for her to make it through the surgery, and you should know that soon. I really do have to get back. Are you sure you don’t want me to call someone? You need a doctor.”

“I’m beat up pretty badly, but everything works, even if it hurts.” I tried to smile at her. “I didn’t even realize I’d crossed back into Douglas County on the way home. Now I’m glad I did. However this turns out, I’ll always be grateful for your help. You go ahead. I’m staying here until I know.”

She nodded at me. “Good luck.” Then she walked out, and the white room was suddenly colder and much more lonely.

Time crawled. I stared at
the door Dr. Hunsaker would come back through, part of me fearing the news he would bring, part of me unable to believe that mere bullets could extinguish Sophie’s grand spirit.

The sound of tires crunching on gravel outside made me struggle to my feet to look out the window. Who else would be coming here this time of night? The sight of the high square shape of an SUV made my pulse quicken for a second before the light bars on the roof registered. The sheriff’s department had both sedans and SUVs. The driver got out, and I recognized the easy roll of Lieutenant Forrester’s walk.

I wrapped the blanket tight around myself and sat back down, wishing he’d just disappear. Tears started seeping out of my eyes and sliding down my face against my will once more. Talking to Deputy Carraher, I’d just ignored the steady drip. Now I desperately wished there was some way to hide my emotional wreckage from the lieutenant.

He hesitated beside me, then dropped my purse on the seat of the chair next to me and walked across the room to where a coffee pot sat, hospitality for clients during office hours, empty and dry now. After rummaging around on the shelves above and in the cupboards below, he disappeared through the door to the back and returned with the pot full of water. Minutes later the rich scent of brewing coffee took some of the coldness out of the room.

By that time I’d blotted my face with the blanket and was dealing with my runny nose by sniffling. The lieutenant returned to the chairs, handed me my purse and sat down beside me.

“You dropped this in the road when you left,” he said. “Didn’t I see one of those little packets of tissues in there?”

Damn him. What had he been doing going through my purse? He looked so clean and in control. I wanted to smear some of the dirt and blood on my hands down the front of his shirt. Instead I dug the tissues out of my purse and blew.

“How is she?” he asked when I was done.

“I don’t know yet. They’re operating. At least no one’s come out to say she’s died.”

“That’s something.” He paused, then went on. “How bad are you hurt?”

“I’m all right,” I said. “Bruised and sore and starting to stiffen up, but nothing’s broken.”

“Looks to me as if that right arm is bothering you.”

“Everything is bothering me. The car rolled.” I stopped cradling my right arm with my left. In truth the pain in my right shoulder and arm was reaching levels that had me thinking evil thoughts about what kind of pain killers Dr. Hunsaker might have in his drug cabinet and how well secured that cabinet might be.

“Want to tell me about it?” the lieutenant asked.

“No.”

He accepted that and settled back in his chair. When the coffee was done, he got up, went and filled two of the styrofoam cups piled there ready. I watched him mix two packets of sugar into one cup.

When he returned and sat down, that was the one he handed me. I drink coffee without sugar, but the sweetness spread a warmth inside me that was almost as good as brandy. I took several sips then cradled the hot cup in both hands.

Little by little, his presence stopped feeling like an intrusion. When he got up with his own empty cup and gestured at mine and said, “More?” I nodded.

Then I found my voice, “Yes, please. No sugar this time.”

When he sat down with the refilled cups, he said, “Looks like it wasn’t Feltzer,” then stopped for a swallow of coffee.

If distracting me from my focus on the door was his purpose, he’d succeeded. I looked straight at him for the first time. “How do you know?”

“Deputies paid them a visit. He wasn’t too cooperative, but his wife was. They didn’t leave the friends’ house until close to the time you were hit. The friends confirm that. His wife says he didn’t go out again after they got home, and there isn’t a mark on his SUV or hers — she has a twin to his. It’s dark too, dark green.”

“Oh.” I drank more coffee, thinking it over. “In one way I’m sorry it isn’t him so that it would be all over now. In another way, I’m glad it isn’t him. I like Ginny, and it would be awful for her if her husband was a murderer.”

“Are you ready to tell me about it now?” he asked.

“I already told Deputy Carraher everything.”

“Tell me too. It will help pass the time.”

I glanced at the unmoving door to the back of the clinic, decided he was right, and began to talk.

“But I never saw him,” I finished. “I can’t even identify the car. It was big and long, one of the bigger SUVs, I think, and it was dark colored, but that’s all I can say.”

“A Humvee?”

I thought about that. “No, different windows, bigger. Not a bigger SUV, bigger windows.”

“Chevy Suburban?”

“Like that, but I don’t know that it was a Chevy.”

“So he pushed you off the road, then he stopped to see how well he’d done. I bet he never even considered an airbag in an older toy car like that.”

“It wasn’t a toy car! It was only six years old, and it was all-wheel drive! The new ones have smaller windows and are all scrunched up, so I can’t even get one like it, and I can’t....” I stopped there, unwilling to let the lieutenant know how big a hole replacing the car was going to tear in my finances.

He ignored my outburst. “So he figured you and the dogs were dead or dying, and at his mercy, and he started down the slope. Then the dogs came at him. He shot at the dogs and hit the female, but he missed the male.”

“It’s my fault,” I said. “I all but hung targets around their necks.”

“You sure shouldn’t have been running all over the place knowing he might take another try at you, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say....”

“When the dogs heard him and ran toward him, I yelled their names. It was stupid. I’ve even been practicing with Sophie. ‘Sophie, come.’ We’ve practiced and practiced, and maybe she wouldn’t have come back, but I didn’t even have the sense to give the command. I just screamed their names, and so I told him they were loose and running at him.”

“Look, Ms. Brennan. If you’d sat in the car and waited for help, you and the dogs would be dead now. You’re alive. They’re alive. Don’t be beating yourself up over how you could have done it better. You did well enough.”

I shook my head and drank more coffee.

“How many shots did you hear?” he asked. “Six?”

The memory was a dark place in my mind I didn’t want to visit. Deputy Carraher hadn’t forced me to go back there, but I knew the lieutenant would, and that the information might help.

“More,” I said. “First there were two shots, spaced, as if he was aiming. And he was — Sophie’s scream was right on top of the sound of the second shot. But then it was wild, just blam, blam, blam. There were at least six shots then, so....”

“So at least eight total, maybe more,” he said thoughtfully. “The dogs must have been right on top of him. I wonder if they took him down, or if he was bitten.”

I hadn’t even thought about that. “One of Sophie’s wounds is right in the center of her chest. So she had to be on top of him, or close. Robo was following her, and he’s been shot before. That’s how he came to Susan — to our rescue — he’d been shot and left for dead. He might know to back off as soon as he heard the first shot, and I think he was following Sophie, not going after anyone himself. Sophie took that night in the parking lot as personally as I did.”

The lieutenant asked me several more questions, but I couldn’t tell him anything else about the attack. He excused himself and went back out to his car. What would he be passing on that Deputy Carraher hadn’t already reported? That the gun was an automatic, I decided, and that my attacker might have been bitten. I hoped he had. I hoped his right arm was missing and he had already bled to death.

When the lieutenant came back in, he picked up where he’d left off. “So he shot one dog and emptied the gun at the other without hitting him, then ran.”

“Exactly. With Robo loose and unhurt, he didn’t have the nerve to come after me. Even with a gun in his hand, he was afraid to be out there with Robo.”

“If you’re sure he’s afraid of dogs, why are you out and about playing detective with all these dog people? They’re the ones who wouldn’t be afraid of the dogs.”

“How do you know what I’m doing?” I asked suspiciously.

“Jefferson County passed on a complaint to us,” he said.

Lee Stander. “So why weren’t you on my doorstep forbidding me to talk to anybody?”

“It’s a free country. I’d stop you if I could because you’re putting yourself in danger, but you aren’t interfering with us. Our investigation is going in other directions.”

What other directions, I wondered, but the lieutenant was repeating his previous question. “Why are you so sure dog people are involved?”

“Because I don’t believe it’s a coincidence that the killer never bothered me until after I went to the specialty show and all the gossip that I could identify him started flying around. He attacked me in the parking lot of my grocery store a couple days after the show. And Jack Sheffield was a dog handler. His life was in the dog world. It makes sense that his killer comes from that world too. There are people in the dog world who wouldn’t have the experience or know-how to stay calm in the face of two big dogs charging at them. You agreed with me the last time we talked.”